Abstract
Race has been a controversial aspect of United States politics from its inception. Slavery was never consistent with the stated goals of the American Revolution, but it was already deeply imbedded into the fabric of colonial society. The Founding Fathers openly grappled not only with the issue of slavery but the legal status of blacks. It was not until 1857 that this controversy was seemingly put to rest. The Supreme Court declared blacks were not American citizens and possessed no legal rights that American social or political institutions were obligated to respect. Sadly, the ensuing four years of war did little to change the minds of those completely entrenched in the ideology of white supremacy. Since the legal eradication of slavery, white supremacists have tried to manipulate the democratic process (politics) to enforce what in their minds is the proper social order where whites held the superior position and people of color were subordinate. This essay examines four instances in which the politics of race were paramount in the American discourse. The outcomes of these events have had little effect on those who believe the United States of America was made by whites, for the benefit of whites.
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Notes
- 1.
Effective in January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation stated that those slaves held by states in conflict against the United Strates were free. As the Confederacy had their own Constitution and government, Lincoln had no authority over them. However, he did have authority over those slave states that had not joined the Confederacy. The border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia were well-known slave states. Not wanting to push them into the Confederacy, the Emancipation Proclamation failed to free slaves held in these states. As a result, Lincoln’s political move switched the principle objective of the conflict from the preservation of the Union’s continuity to ending slavery. However, no slaves were immediately freed. The end of the Peculiar Institution and the Confederacy occurred only after Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops on April 9, 1865.
- 2.
W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction (New York: Russell & Russell, 1935), 223; Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (New York: Vantage Books, 1965), 112.
- 3.
See William Richter, Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen’s Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865–1868; Barry Crouch, The Freedmen’s Bureau and Black Texans; Randy Finley, From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom: The Freedmen’s Bureau in Arkansas; Howard White, The Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana.
- 4.
See Ronald Butchart, Northern Schools, Southern Blacks and Reconstruction; Robert Morris, Reading, ‘Riting, and Reconstruction.
- 5.
Rosina Hoard, Slave Narratives, Box 4H359, University of Texas, Center for American History.
- 6.
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, National Archives M821, roll 32.
- 7.
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, National Archives M821, roll 32, Miscellaneous Records Relating to Murders and other Criminal Offenses Committed in Texas 1865–1868; Letter from ME Davis to HA Ellis, October 13, 1866, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, National Archives M821, roll 32.
- 8.
Gladys-Marie Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 110.
- 9.
Elliott J. Gorn, “Black Spirits: The Ghostlore of Afro-American Slaves,” American Quarterly, 36 (1984): 549–565.
- 10.
Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History, 146.
- 11.
Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 199–201; Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 275; Randolph Campbell, Gone to Texas (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 281; Rupert Richardson, et al, Texas: The Lone Star State (Hoboken, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2004), 244.
- 12.
William Hamilton, Slave Narratives, Box 4H359, The University of Texas, Center for American History.
- 13.
Will Adams, Slave Narratives, Box 4H359, The University of Texas, Center for American History.
- 14.
Euline Brock, “Thomas W. Cardozo: Fallible Black Reconstruction Leader,” Journal of Southern History XLVII, No. 2 (May 1981): 183–206 P185.
- 15.
www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=86e1136a04ba42aaa80ea2e626df2c47, Accessed January 15, 2020.
- 16.
Brock, “Thomas W. Cardozo,” 206.
- 17.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/rooted-reconstruction-first-wave-black-congressmen/, accessed January 15, 2020.
- 18.
Robert Rutland, The Republicans: From Lincoln to Bush (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1996) , 170.
- 19.
John Salmond, “The Civilian Conservation Corp and the Negro,” The Journal of American History 52 (June 1965): 75–88.
- 20.
Charles Martin, “Negro Leaders, the Republican Party, and the Election of 1932,” Phylon 32 (1st Quarter 1971): 85–93; James Sears, “Black Americans and the New Deal,” The History Teacher 10, no. 1 (November 1976): 89–105.
- 21.
Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower (Penguin Books, 1993), 360; Nelson Lichtenstein, Susan Strasser, et al., Who Built America? (New York: Worth Publishers, 2000): 437; Nancy Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983): 180–208.
- 22.
Richard Hofstadter, “From Calhoun to the Dixiecrats,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 245–261.
- 23.
Sarah McCulloh Lemmon, “The Ideology of the Dixiecrat Movement,” Social Forces 30, no. 2 (December 1951): 162–171.
- 24.
Emile B. Ader, “Why the Dixiecrats Failed,” The Journal of Politics 15, no. 3 (August 1953): 356–369.
- 25.
Barton Berstein and Allen Matusow, The Truman Administration: A Documentary History (New York: Harper & Row, 1966): 112.
- 26.
Lemmon, “The Ideology of the Dixiecrat Movement,” 163.
- 27.
Emile B. Ader, “Why the Dixiecrats Failed,” The Journal of Politics 15, no. 3 (August 1953): 356–369.
- 28.
Lemmon, “The Ideology of the Dixiecrat Movement,” 168; Hofstadter, “From Calhoun to the Dixiecrats,” 255
- 29.
R.W. Apple, Jr. “G.O.P. Tries Hard to Win Black Votes, but Recent History Works Against It,” New York Times, September 19, 1996. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/19/us/gop-tries-hard-to-win-black-votes-but-recent-history-works-against-it.html, Accessed April 10, 2020.
- 30.
Angie Maxwell, “What We Got Wrong About the Southern Strategy,” Washington Post, July 26, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/26/what-we-get-wrong-about-southern-strategy/, Accessed April 1, 2020.
- 31.
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (New York: The New Press, 2010), 44.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
“Nixon Aides Suggest Colleague was Kidding About Drug War Being Designed to Target Black People,” Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-nixon-drug-war-john-ehrlichman_n_56f58be6e4b0a3721819ec61?j4cvxkk6gn39b2o6r, Accessed March 25, 2020.
- 34.
Hilary Hanson, “Nixon Aide reportedly Admitted Drug War Was Meant to Target Black People,” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nixon-drug-war-racist_n_56f16a0ae4b03a640a6bbda1, Accessed April 1, 2020.
- 35.
Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 47.
- 36.
Scott Laderman, “How Richard Nixon captured White Rage—and Laid the Groundwork for Donald Trump,” Washington Post, November 3, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/03/how-richard-nixon-captured-white-rage-laid-groundwork-donald-trump/, Accessed April 15, 2020.
- 37.
Michelle Brattain, “Forgetting the South and the Southern Strategy” Miranda, November 29, 2011. https://journals.openedition.org/miranda/2243, Accessed April 10, 2020.
- 38.
Frank Brown, “Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’ and the Forces against Brown” The Journal of Negro Education 73, no. 3 (Summer, 2004): 191–208.
- 39.
Under the Civil Rights Act (1964) the Attorney General had the authority to prosecute school districts which either violated or did not act in good faith in complying with the Supreme Court’s order to desegregate schools.
- 40.
Clay Risen, “The Myth of ‘the Southern Strategy,” New York Times, December 10, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10Section2b.t-4.html, Accessed March 15, 2020.
- 41.
President Bill Clinton put the First Lady, Hillary Clinton, in charge of guiding the heath care plan through Congress. In hindsight, there is intense debate as to whether the health care plan failed because of opposition to the First Lady, or the merits of the plan itself.
- 42.
Thomas Edge, “Southern Strategy 2.0: Conservatives, White Voters, and the Election of Barack Obama” Journal of Black Studies 40, no. 3 (January 2010): 426–444.
- 43.
Ibid., 431–432.
- 44.
Ibid., 435.
- 45.
Ibid., 436–438.
- 46.
Associated Press, November 15, 2008. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27738018/ns/us_news-life/t/obama-election-spurs-race-threats-crimes/#.XqsOKGhKhPY, Accessed March 21, 2020.
- 47.
Philip S. S. Howard, “Turning Out the Center: Racial Politics and African Agency in the Obama Era” Journal of Black Studies 40, no. 3 (January 2010): 380–394.
- 48.
Ewen MacAskill, “Jimmy Carter: Animosity Towards Barack Obama is Due to Racism” The Guardian, September 16, 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/16/jimmy-carter-racism-barack-obama, Accessed April 15, 2020.
- 49.
Michael Tesler, “The Return of Old-Fashioned Racism to White Americans’ partisan Preferences in the early Obama Era,” The Journal of Politics 75, no. 1 (December 21, 2012): 110–123.
- 50.
This event was directly responsible for King George’s tightening his grip on the colonies that in turn led to the First Continental Congress. Before the Second Continental Congress could convene in 1775, the confrontation at Lexington and Concord had already erupted. The American Revolution had begun. The activities of a few radical locals resulted in the dismantling of an empire and the birth of a new republic.
- 51.
Kevin Arceneaux and Stephen P. Nicholson, “Who Wants to Have a Tea Party? The Who, What, and Why of the Tea Party Movement” Political Science and Politics 45, no. 4 (October 2012): 700–710.
- 52.
Ibid., 708.
- 53.
Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 1 (March 2011): 25–43.
- 54.
Ibid., 34.
- 55.
Andrew D. McNitt, “The Tea Party Movement and the 2012 House Election” Political Science and Politics 47, no. 4 (October 2014): 799–805.
- 56.
Michael Ray, “Tea Party Movement,” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tea-Party-movement, Accessed March 5, 2020.
- 57.
Brattain, “Forgetting the South and the Southern Strategy.”
- 58.
An example of new information requiring historical revision involves Richard Nixon and the Watergate fiasco. For more than 30 years the identity of the individual who supplied information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein was simply known as Deep Throat. Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the break-in at the Watergate building in Washington DC was directly responsible for Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. The identity of Deep Throat was one of the most closely guarded secrets in U.S. history. In the spring of 2005, 91-year-old William Felt, who served as an FBI Associate Director during Nixon’s presidency, admitted that he had been the informant. Woodward and Bernstein confirmed that Felt was indeed Deep Throat. This revelation reopened the entire Watergate saga to new historical interpretation and analysis.
- 59.
Brattain, “Forgetting the South and the Southern Strategy.”
- 60.
John McWhorter, “Racism in America is Over” Forbes, December 30, 2008, https://www.forbes.com/2008/12/30/end-of-racism-oped-cx_jm_1230mcwhorter.html#6e80063349f8, Accessed April 1, 2020.
- 61.
Eoin Higgins, “The Silent Majority Stands with Trump” https://eoinhiggins.com/the-silent-majority-stands-with-trump-e17f3afbd4e, Accessed March 31, 2020.
- 62.
David Corn, “Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters” Mother Jones, September 17, 2012, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser/, Accessed April 5, 2020.
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
Higgins, “The Silent majority Stands with Trump.”
- 65.
Ibid.
- 66.
Jeet Heer, “How the southern strategy made Donald Trump possible” The New Republic, February 18, 2016, https://newrepublic.com/article/130039/southern-strategy-made-donald-trump-possible, Accessed March 15, 2020.
- 67.
Ibid.
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Goodwin, R.E. (2022). White Supremacy and the Politics of Race. In: Johansen, B.E., Akande, A. (eds) Get Your Knee Off Our Necks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85155-2_4
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