Reconstruction Doc on PBS Should Be a Required Course for Every American
by John Lawrence, May 8, 2019
In light of the recent furor in Charlottesville regarding the taking down of Confederate statues, the PBS documentary was very enlightening. It can be viewed online here. After the Confederacy was defeated in the Civil War, not only were the slaves liberated, but they had full civil rights including right of access to public accommodations. Long before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, Ida Wells refused to move out of her seat in a train car in 1883. In those days black people were legally entitled to the same accommodations as whites, but white southerners pushed back determined to reestablish the lifestyle they had before the Civil War. Step by step they forced blacks back to a second class citizenship. Ida Wells sued the railroad and won, but the decision was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Before long the Jim Crow laws were in full swing. Blacks could not eat in the same restaurants as whites; they could not sleep at the same hotels; they could not sit in the same sections at movie theaters; they could not even drink out of the same drinking fountains. How this all came about and why the north let the south get away with it is the subject of this PBS documentary. Thus it was no accident that the Daughters of the Confederacy in the 1890s, in order to restore the glory of the Confederacy, started erecting statues of famous southern generals including Robert E Lee. And it's perfectly understandable why black people today are offended by these statues and want them taken down. The roots of white resistance to black equality are in the ante bellum south, but that mindset of white supremacy is fully alive today.
It wasn't until 1964 that full civil rights were restored to black people, rights that they once had had at the end of the Civil War but which were gradually taken away from them mainly by white southerners. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. Jim Crow laws existed predominantly in the south so the northern states must be given some credit here. However, even in some northern states there were miscegenation and school segregation laws. Whites took over the political process in the south by requiring voters to read the Constitution. Most newly freed blacks were illiterate.
Today the white nationalists and supremicists are at it again. Not content to let racism and hatred die out completely, they are forming their own communities on the internet and taking lone wolf actions like shooting people in churches and synagogues or burning down religious institutions of those whom they don't consider to be "true" Americans. These guys are just as much terrorists as ISIS lone wolf suicide bombers. At least hatred toward those considered not to be members of the white race is not codified and assembled at the national level as it was in Nazi Germany. It is now individual acts by sick people who will not accept the humanity and equality of all members of the human race. It can be reduced by eliminating the sale of high power and high capacity rifles such as the AR-47, and by taking down hate oriented websites on Facebook, Google and other places. As privately owned entities Facebook and Google don't have to provide for free speech. That's a requirement only of the government. It doesn't pertain to private property as those who have tried to pass out flyers in shopping malls can attest.
