The End of Reconstruction

The End of Reconstruction

It started with a political deal in 1876. The Democratic candidate, Governor Samuel Tilden of New York apparently won the election for President over Republican Rutherford Hayes, Governor of Ohio. Tilden won the popular vote by 50.9%, with 4,288,546 votes to Hayes’ 4,034,311. The apparent electoral vote total was 184 for Tilden and 165 to Hayes. At the time, 185 was the number needed for majority. There were two sets of votes sent from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and one disputed vote from Oregon, making a total of twenty votes in question.

Who was right, who was wrong no longer was the point. There was a deal to be made between the Southern Democrats and the Republicans that controlled Congress. The Southern Democrats agreed to cede all 20 votes, making Hayes the President, in return for the end of the military occupation of the South (from the Civil War) and political control of those states. The deal was made – and Tilden was left behind.

It was the end of Reconstruction, and the end of the Radical Republican dream of racial equality enshrined in the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution. Soon new laws were introduced in the South, the “Jim Crow Laws,” which guaranteed separation of the races and there was a steady movement towards discriminatory laws in both the South and the North. It took close to a century to undo the damage done by this deal.

This morning, in a “tweet,” the President of the United States began the undoing of the advances made by the LGBTQ community in the past decade. It didn’t take a nefarious committee of the Congress, it didn’t take a national discussion: President Trump picked up his phone, and removed the right and opportunity for transgendered folks to serve in the military. What about the estimated 1320 to 6630 transgendered who are already serving? What about the fact that those folks have served openly, because there were told they could,  now facing discharge? What about the newly graduated transgendered from the national military academies? They’re out.

With all of the craziness that goes on in the Trump Administration (this morning: the health care votes in the Senate, the cyber-bullying of the Attorney General, the firing of White House staff by Scaramucci, John McCain, and on and on) we shouldn’t miss this. The President is rolling back the advancement of LGBTQ rights. He’s doing it not through a Presidential order, not through a press conference where questions can be asked: no – only through a “tweet” which allows for no questions.

From a more global perspective the Trump administration represents a real turning point in the progress of human rights in the United States. It’s the “voting commission” and the national restriction of voting rights, the Education Department’s change on transgendered policy, the call of the Vice President for the teaching of the science of “creationism” versus the “theory” of evolution in school, the willingness of the President to remove Medicaid from 20 million to 30 million people. It all represents a “roll back” of rights, much like the end of Reconstruction.

Let’s hope it doesn’t take a century to fix.

 

PBS – The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_election.html

Rand Study – Transgendered in the Military

https://www.rand.org/news/press/2016/06/30.html

Atlantic – Sec’y of Defense Carter – allows transgendered to serve

https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/06/transgender-military/489584/

Pence and Creationism

https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaenamontanari/2016/11/10/vp-elect-mike-pence-does-not-accept-evolution-heres-why-that-matters/