Page 27 - 1619 Project Curriculum

August 18, 2019

Edward Brooke of Massachusetts rights legislation Congress has ever would grant him the presidency War America evaporated under

took office in 1967.) More than 600 passed. It codified black American in a contested election, agreed to the desire for national reunifica­

black men served in Southern state citizenship for the first time, pro­ pull federal troops from the South. tion, black Americans, simply by

legislatures and hundreds more in hibited housing discrimination and With the troops gone, white South­ existing, served as a problematic

local positions. gave all Americans the right to buy erners quickly went about eradi­ reminder of this nation’s failings.

These black officials joined and inherit property, make and cating the gains of Reconstruction. White America dealt with this

with white Republicans, some of enforce contracts and seek redress The systemic white suppression of inconvenience by constructing a

whom came down from the North, from courts. In 1868, Congress rati ­ black life was so severe that this savagely enforced system of racial

to write the most egalitarian state fied the 14th Amendment, ensuring period between the 1880s and the apartheid that excluded black

constitutions the South had ever citizenship to any person born in 1920 and ’30s became known as the people almost entirely from main­

seen. They helped pass more equi­ the United States. Today, thanks to Great Nadir, or the second slavery. stream American life — a system

table tax legislation and laws that this amendment, every child born Democracy would not return to the so grotesque that Nazi Germany

prohibited discrimination in pub­ here to a European, Asian, African, South for nearly a century. would later take inspiration from

lic transportation, accommodation Latin American or Middle Eastern White Southerners of all econom­ it for its own racist policies.

and housing. Perhaps their biggest immigrant gains automatic citizen­ ic classes, on the other hand, thanks Despite the guarantees of equal ­

achievement was the establishment ship. The 14th Amendment also, in significant part to the progres­ ity in the 14th Amendment, the

v
of that most democratic of Ameri­ for the first time, constitutionally sive policies and laws black people Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy .

can institutions: the public school. guaranteed equal protection under had championed, experienced sub­ Ferguson decision in 1896 declared

Public education eff ectively did not the law. Ever since, nearly all other stantial improvement in their lives that the racial segregation of black

exist in the South before Recon­ marginalized groups have used the even as they forced black people Americans was constitutional. With

struction. The white elite sent 14th Amendment in their fights back into a quasi slavery. As Waters the blessing of the nation’s highest

their children to private schools, for equality (including the recent McIntosh, who had been enslaved court and no federal will to vindi ­

while poor white children went successful arguments before the in South Carolina, lamented, ‘‘It was cate black rights, starting in the

without an education. But newly Supreme Court on behalf of same- the poor white man who was freed late 1800s, Southern states passed

freed black people, who had been sex marriage). Finally, in 1870, Con­ by the war, not the Negroes.’’ a series of laws and codes meant to

prohibited from learning to read gress passed the 15th Amendment, make slavery’s racial caste system
and write during slavery, were des­ guaranteeing the most critical Georgia pines flew past the windows permanent by denying black people

perate for an education. So black aspect of democracy and citizen­ of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac political power, social equality and

legislators successfully pushed for ship — the right to vote — to all men Woodard home to Winnsboro, S.C. basic dignity. They passed literacy

a universal, state- funded system of regardless of ‘‘race, color, or previ ­ After serving four years in the Army tests to keep black people from vot­

schools — not just for their own ous condition of servitude.’’ in World War II, where Woodard ing and created all-white primaries

children but for white children, For this fleeting moment known had earned a battle star, he was for elections. Black people were

too. Black legislators also helped as Reconstruction, the majority in given an honorable discharge ear ­ prohibited from serving on juries

white
pass the first compulsory educa­ Congress seemed to embrace the lier that day at Camp Gordon and or testifying in court against a

tion laws in the region. Southern idea that out of the ashes of the Civil was headed home to meet his wife. person. South Carolina prohibited

children, black and white, were War, we could create the multiracial When the bus stopped at a small white and black textile workers

now required to attend schools democracy that black Americans drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, from using the same doors. Okla ­

like their Northern counterparts. envisioned even if our founding Woodard got into a brief argument homa forced phone companies to

Just five years into Reconstruction, fathers did not. with the white driver after asking if segregate phone booths. Memphis

every Southern state had enshrined But it would not last. he could use the restroom. About had separate parking spaces for

the right to a public education for Anti-black racism runs in the half an hour later, the driver stopped black and white drivers. Baltimore

all children into its constitution. very DNA of this country, as does again and told Woodard to get off passed an ordinance outlawing

In some states, like Louisiana and the belief, so well articulated by the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Wood­ black people from moving onto

South Carolina, small numbers of Lincoln, that black people are the ard stepped from the stairs and saw a block more than half white and

black and white children, briefly, obstacle to national unity. The the police waiting for him. Before white people from moving onto a

attended schools together. many gains of Reconstruction were he could speak, one of the officers block more than half black. Geor ­

Led by black activists and a met with fi erce white resistance struck him in his head with a billy gia made it illegal for black and

Republican Party pushed left by throughout the South, including club, beating him so badly that white people to be buried next to
the blatant recalcitrance of unthinkable violence against the he fell unconscious. The blows to one another in the same cemetery.
white

Southerners, the years directly after formerly enslaved, wide-scale voter Woodard’s head were so severe that Alabama barred black people from

slavery saw the greatest expansion suppression, electoral fraud and when he woke in a jail cell the next using public libraries that their own

of human and civil rights this nation even, in some extreme cases, the day, he could not see. The beating tax dollars were paying for. Black

would ever see. In 1865, Congress overthrow of democratically elect­ occurred just 4½ hours after his people were expected to jump off

passed the 13th Amendment, mak ­ ed biracial governments. Faced with military discharge. At 26, Woodard the sidewalk to let white people pass

ing the United States one of the last this unrest, the federal government would never see again. and call all white people by an hon­

nations in the Americas to outlaw decided that black people were the There was nothing unusual orific, though they received none

slavery. The following year, black cause of the problem and that for about Woodard’s horrific maiming. no matter how old they were. In the

Americans, exerting their new unity’s sake, it would leave the white It was part of a wave of systemic North, white politicians implement­

political power, pushed white leg ­ South to its own devices. In 1877, violence deployed against black ed policies that segregated black
islators to pass the Civil Rights Act, President Rutherford B. Hayes, Americans after Reconstruction, in people into slum neighborhoods

the nation’s first such law and one in order to secure a compromise both the North and the South. As and into inferior all-black schools,

of the most expansive pieces of civil with Southern Democrats that the egalitarian spirit of post-Civil operated whites- only public pools

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