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Not just used against blacks, but those the far upper middle would rather not see, whatever they are. I think we have to remember that the segregation is also about class. The 'nice' neighborhoods didn't especially want to see poor anyone moving in. It's gotten worse with the rise of the 'upper middle' with all their toys and attitude. The neighborhoods which featured boats and quads as standard amusement did not want to see the ones with old pick up trucks of any color. It was a confirmation of success, that they had made it, and didn't want to rest out there to intrude.
I think if there had been real true equal rights in place, instead of racial controlls there would have been cultural and economic scheeming to give the successful that same seperation, and the realities might be a different blend but the same trend which society had long been on.
Redlining was used exclusively against Blacks. It was first used, IIRC, in NYC, where the poor neighborhoods were full of European immigrants and Blacks. Real estate developers built apartment complexes on (then) the edge of town, and wanted to attract the White residents of the inner city out to those new buildings. Redlining was invented as a way to corral Blacks in the inner city and not allow them to move out to the newly-developed neighborhoods along with some of their neighbors.
Makes hardly any difference. Even before Hayes pulled the troops, there were only two Republican State governments left in the South, both clinging on by their fingertips. As the Democrats controlled the HoR, and were refusing to fund further military action in the South, the troops would have left soon in any case.
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What if there was no Plessy v. Ferguson?
How exactly do you avoid it? You need a totally different Supreme Court.
Makes hardly any difference. Even before Hayes pulled the troops, there were only two Republican State governments left in the South, both clinging on by their fingertips. As the Democrats controlled the HoR, and were refusing to fund further military action in the South, the troops would have left soon in any case.
How exactly do you avoid it? You need a totally different Supreme Court.
There could be an argument that civil rights during Reconstruction were not enforced at the level it should have been (more Freedmen's Bureaus, more distribution of "40 acres and a mule", more civil/voting rights protections, stiffer prosecutions of ex-Confederates).
Oh, by the way, during Reconstruction, there were a bunch of Black Republicans in Congress during Reconstruction, which should have reduced the number of Southern Democrats. But with the lack of enforcement and protection, ultimately leading to pullout of 1876, Black Republicans, Black voting rights, and Black everything else, get kicked to the curb for the next 90 years!
As for Plessy, I guess your right....it took 58 years to have a "totally different Supreme Court"!
There could be an argument that civil rights during Reconstruction were not enforced at the level it should have been (more Freedmen's Bureaus, more distribution of "40 acres and a mule", more civil/voting rights protections, stiffer prosecutions of ex-Confederates).
Oh, by the way, during Reconstruction, there were a bunch of Black Republicans in Congress during Reconstruction, which should have reduced the number of Southern Democrats. But with the lack of enforcement and protection, ultimately leading to pullout of 1876, Black Republicans, Black voting rights, and Black everything else, get kicked to the curb for the next 90 years!
As for Plessy, I guess your right....it took 58 years to have a "totally different Supreme Court"!
I think the situation during Reconstruction was essencially inevitable. First of all, because of Lincon's death. He did not favor the heavy, punishing hand on the South. He did not want them to be the enemy and did want them to be brought back into national society. The area was devistated. The users, black and white, northern and southern, descended. Blacks were not given their fourty acres because those in power thought they deserved it, but to snub the whites. The Radical republicans did not so much care about respecting the ex-slaves as sticking it to white southerners as often as possible. They virutally set the stage for a reactionary situation where it would be reversed in kind when the nation at large tired of funding an army to enforce it.
To some degree it would have been inevitable because it was an area of hunger, destitution of both races and little rule of law. In that case, those who can will take over. Those who lose look for ways of getting back. One of the results is the South has been mired in poverty of both whites and blacks since that time. And civil wars in general are the most vicious of them all, especially to the losers.
A lot of those who opposed slavery were quite passionate about it, but equally clueless about what to do with masses of now free people who were not educated, who still carried with them an inborn mentality, and who they did not think deserved to be owned, but didn't really feel a lot of empathy with either. There were movements, some carried out, to send newly freed slaves back to Africa. For many, abolition was about an idea which had few actual faces attached, and faced with the reality had no clue. Add to that that in the destruction and poverty and hunger, things like education and housing were not high on the list for anyone, it meant there was a dilema which was allowed to solve itself.
If the plan advocated by Lincoln to rejoin the union, and include all parties had been carried out at least to a good degree, perhaps it would have worked out far different. But the users took from the weak, the pawns got used until there wasn't any use left, and instead of drawing the south back in it pushed them further away. But only with such a plan could these rights have realistically been applied since respect does not come out of coercion and abuse, but from looking forward.
Ironichally, it was South Africa, the poster child of racial despotism, that forgave everyone and while it is hardly paradise, it did not become a blood bath.
There could be an argument that civil rights during Reconstruction were not enforced at the level it should have been (more Freedmen's Bureaus, more distribution of "40 acres and a mule", more civil/voting rights protections, stiffer prosecutions of ex-Confederates).
About a million men served in the Confederate Army. It was hardly possible to prosecute all of them. Even if some of the top shelf are permanently barred from office, all that does is transfer the baton to the next echelon, ie ex-Majors and Captains instead of ex-Generals and Colonels. But they would be of exactly the same political and racial views.
And how do you enforce any of it once the army is back to peacetime level? By about 1872 it was already reduced to about 30,000, of whom the vast majority (and virtually all the Cavalry) were needed out west. As Lucy Hayes put it to a critic of her husband's policy "What was Mr Hayes to do? He had no army". This was only a very slight exaggeration.
Nor did this begin with Hayes. One reason why Grant refused to intervene in Mississippi in 1876 was that the force available to him was simply insufficient to save the Republicans there from defeat. So unless you can get Northern voters to cough up their money for a huge peacetime army which they don't particularly need - -.
One thing that is important in this discussion, is the importance of sending a message, or two; 1) rebellion against the United States will result in severe consequences; 2) the South cannot go back to the old ways.
That message was never carried out. While I understand the difficulty in prosecuting "a million men in the Confederate Army", it is very interesting that the top echelon of the confederacy were treated lightly. Jeff Davis, the president, gets only two years for treason. Had General Forrest been prosecuted and punished for the slaughter at Fort Pillow, we would not have had a Ku Klux Klan terrorizing people! And what happens to General Lee?....he gets not one, not two, but three "pardons" (Lincoln pardons him but the paperwork is misfiled. Johnson gives him amnesty, and then Gerry Ford, a century later, correct any "errors" and grants Lee citizenship). What's the worst thing that happens to Lee? His house gets taken over and used as a burial.
I'm sure there were Radical Rebublicans that were ready to go, as we would now call it, "Nurenburg style", and prosecute a bunch of the confederate leadership early and hard, before time, money and support ran out. But thanks to an uncooperative President and the failure to remove him, that never happened.
. Jeff Davis, the president, gets only two years for treason. .
Jefferson Davis was held for two years pending trial, but was never brought to trial. He was released on bail and the prosecution dropped the charges two years after that.
Jefferson Davis was held for two years pending trial, but was never brought to trial. He was released on bail and the prosecution dropped the charges two years after that.
Thanks for the correction, which further proves the point.....treating the confederate leadership with kid gloves!
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