History
It must have been a lot like this, the years after Appomattox. The Civil War was over, Lincoln was dead. Union troops occupied the former Confederate states and the re-United States were faced with the aftermath of Civil War. How to reorganize the Nation, now with nearly five million newly freed citizens. How to prevent the Southern re-establishment, the leadership of the Rebellion from regaining power. And how to do all of this after four years of the worst blood-letting in American history.
The Northern troops wanted to go home, back to their families and farms. But they stayed, in South Carolina and Texas, Alabama and Florida and the rest of the South; and attempted to enforce the will of the Congress. That was expressed first in the 13th Amendment barring slavery, then later the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law, and finally the 15th Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote.
What We Learned
Looking back at my own “history lessons” in my education, I now know that my teachers were influenced by “revisionism”. In my classes (and unfortunately later in my teaching), the Reconstruction Era was slanted towards the “poor, abused Rebels in the South”. Our textbook emphasized the terms “scalawag”, a white southerner who cooperated with the Union troops, and “carpetbagger” a northerner who came to the South to make money. They were more important than Night Riders or lynching or the Ku Klux Klan. Former Confederate General James Longstreet, who favored moving with reunion rather than resisting, was castigated for “giving up” the cause. Former General Nathan Bedford Forrest, seen as somewhat heroic in establishing the Klan.
But the world of the Freedmen, the newly Black citizens of the Nation, was not emphasized. We didn’t teach it, because we didn’t learn it. The successes of those nascent Black communities, later snuffed out by the Black Codes and Jim Crow and the Klan, were ignored. And because that was how we were taught, it was what we taught as well, at least, at the beginning of my career. I learned more, and better, as my career progressed – hopefully my students did as well. But I am sorry for my early contributions to a continuing false narrative.
Today
It must have been like that, living in the North, hearing about the what was going on in the South. Reading about the excitement of the new Black voters, then knowing that their hopes were crushed by the old White establishment. And finally, with 1877 and the Hayes/Tilden deal, Southern Democrats gave up the Presidency to a Republican in return for an end to Reconstruction. The US Government gave up on trying to protect those new citizens.
Because it’s happening today in the state of Georgia, where two newly elected Democratic Senators, one Black, one Jewish, shocked the state and nation. Democrats may have won the Presidential election there as well, but Republicans control the state government. And they are fighting back, restricting the vote. Yesterday they made it illegal to even pass out water and snacks in the notoriously long voting lines. Illegal to pass out water.
And those lines won’t be in suburban or white rural Georgia. They are in the majority Black precincts: surprise. And the State Legislature passed and the Republican Governor signed a whole raft of other restrictive provisions, making sure it is harder to vote. The target of the new law is obvious – all of those new Black voters who dared to exercise their right to vote and change the outcome of 2020.
Politics of Race
Sure this is really the first “shot” of Governor Brian Kemp’s bid to win reelection over Democratic challenger Stacy Abrams. But it’s not just “politics as usual”. At least, not usual unless you are talking about the axe handle segregationist rhetoric of Georgia’s Governor Lester Maddox in the early 1970’s. Yes, Maddox was a Democrat, but so was his successor, Jimmy Carter, who repudiated Maddox and started to move Georgia away from the dark ages of racism.
Now it’s back, under the veneer of election security. But we all know what’s really being secured: the “right” of the White Republicans of Georgia to maintain control. And as we sit here in the “North” we aren’t helpless. There is action being taken, now, in Congress, to protect voting rights in Georgia and all of America.
American Choice
We Americans are faced with a new “Hayes/Tilden” deal. This time it’s in the form of an old segregationist tool, the Filibuster in the Senate. The Filibuster prevents a majority of the Senate from exercising their will, if, they don’t include an extra ten votes. And a solid “Red” wall of Republican recalcitrance blocks every effort at reform or protection. But there is a slim Democratic majority in the Senate – if they only have the will to act.
Americans in 1877 acquiesced to the end of Reconstruction and the reign of Jim Crow Laws in the South. Americans in 2021 are faced with a similar choice. We know what happened to the Black voters of the South. It’s taken over a century for them to regain their rights under the 15th Amendment. The old saying goes: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”. America knows the real history now. We need to work to make sure that the failures of 1877 aren’t repeated today. We need to end the Filibuster and pass the Voting Rights Act.
