1.2.Redemption
1.2.1. Compromise of 1877
The breaking point in the current development of the relationships between two races was the decision made in 1877. As described in the page 14, the life of the Black people has been changed that year. In this paragraph the closer look upon the consequences of this compromise will be given.
The situation in the second half of eighties in the nineteenth century was unstable but several strong tendencies could be observed. The strengthening of the Democratic Party was the major one. In 1874 they have acquired the control of the House. It was very important event for them because it was their first victory since 1858. (Williams 157) Republican Party has lost the trust of the people step by step due to many scandals with a corruption. To Republican’s disadvantage worked the fact of the poverty and economical crisis in the country after war that influenced people in their decisions too. During the term of U.S. Grant as a president two big scandals in which he was involved came to a surface. Grant, not very much experienced in the field of the economic, gave his trust into “a pair of the most daring and unscrupulous speculators in the country”. (Williams 153) Even though Grant’s intentions may be pure, his name was involved in the scandals. This and the still rebellious mood contributed to the uncertainty of the next Republicans victory.
In 1876 Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden, the governor of New York, whose name was connected with the fight against the corruption and the support of the economic. Rutherford B. Hayes, who has been connected with the fight for the civil service reform, was the candidate for the Republicans. (Williams 157) He also intended to strengthen a state power which he expressed as following: “if elected, he would bring “the blessings of honest and capable local self government” to the South.” (History.com Staff, “The Compromise of 1877)
On the Election Day Tilden obtained 184 of 185 votes that he needed. The difficulty came in four states: Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon. Republicans refused to admit a possible victory of the Democrats. They accused the Democratic Party and their supporters from an intimidating and manipulating the elections. There have been fights, bloodshed and the guilt in the Republican as well as in Democratic Party. “A clash between black militia and armed whites in Hamburg in July ended in the death of five militia men after their surrender. Six white men were killed in Camboy where armed Blacks opened fire in a political meeting.” (History.com Staff, “The Compromise of 1877”)
The guilt was on both sides. The important fact is that Republicans did not intend to recognize a president from the Democratic Party. There were 20 disputed electoral votes which both Parties claimed. These 20 votes could change the result of a very possible election victory of Tilden. Congress brought the solution of this very delicate situation. “Congress set up an electoral commission in January 1877.” In this commission were “five senators, five Supreme Court justices and five U.S. representatives”. These members consisted of “seven Republicans, seven Democrats and one independent”. (History.com Staff, “The Compromise of 1877”)
In March moderate Democrats with Hayes’s Republican allies met. They agreed on the conditions that led to Compromise 1877 on March 2, which ended the era of Reconstruction. Hayes’s victory was agreed but under certain conditions. “Democrats would accept Hayes as a president and respect the civil and political rights of the Black people in return for withdrawal of federal troops from South.” Withdrawal meant that Democrats will have a control in the South again. Hayes, as a new president, “would also have to agree to name a leading southerner to his cabinet and to support federal aid for the Texas and Pacific Railroad, a planned transcontinental line via a southern route”. (History.com Staff, “The Compromise of 1877”)
Even though there were no serious efforts made to support the railroad construction, after two months of his presidency he ordered to withdraw federal troops from the South. As the article “The Compromise of 1877” says: “Democratic victory in gubernatorial elections in 1876, Democrats had been restored to power all across the South”. (History.com Staff, “The Compromise of 1877”)
As the following pages reveal, the pledge of Democrats has not been fulfilled. The civil and political rights were in following years suppressed with onset of the Jim Crow laws.
Commencement of Jim Crow
The beginning of the Jim Crow era cannot be defined by a certain year. The tendencies to separate the Black and white people there were yet before the Civil war and they spread through the United States during the Reconstruction. To understand such a huge change in the attitude it is right to search in the history and examine this development in more detail.
Woodward comments this development in the South and also in the North in his “Strange Career of Jim Crow”. There were few indications of Jim Crow laws in the South before the Civil war had begun. The society based on the slavery had interracial contact every day in the most aspects of its life. The families of slave-owners lived together with their servants usually in one block of houses or in one house. Woodward shows that “there is not much in the record that supports the legend of racial harmony in slavery times, but there is much evidence of contact”. (13) The intimacy had one reason; it was reasonable and practical for their ways of lives. This system was stable and the segregation would disrupt this, many years working, system. (Woodward 12, 13)
The intimacy of the living was not as natural and harmonious as it may seem. For example from the point of view of the slave, especially women, it was very difficult to keep their families. As Faragher et al. show, many women on plantations had to take care of the white children and their role of a maid did not end when the children grew up. Their duty to arrange comfort for their masters continued even when their masters married and moved. Irrespective of their family, women had to go with their masters. (209)
More obvious features of the segregation could be seen in the South cities but it could not be compared to the cities of the North. Southern cities did not extend segregation for the whole city parts, only few streets or blocks were not mixed (completely segregated). Segregation could be seen in the facilities such as theatres, hospitals or jails. On the contrary: Woodward shows the example of New Orleans where the events as mixed balls or religious meetings were common and popular. The city life in the South was rare in its customs at all in comparison to the rural area. During antebellum years slavery was rapidly declining and by 1860 there were less than 2 per cent of slaves. Slave owners in cities did not have such a big control over their slaves and differences between slaves and their masters decreased. (14 - 17)
This shared intimacy was seen in the South as something disgusting. Woodward claims that the System of Jim Crow laws “was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force.” (17) This was very interesting paradox in the history of the USA. It was the North who waged the war also against the slavery and but it was also North who brought to the South the system of the laws that made the life of freedmen much harder.
In the opposition to Woodward’s “Strange career of Jim Crow” is Rodger A. Fischer with his “Racial Segregation in Ante-Bellum New Orleans”. He claims that Woodward’s theory that racial segregation begun after 1887 has several serious imperfections. He agrees that:
In rural setting where whites and Negroes lived in virtually a total state of interdependence, formal race separation would have been an absurdity, hindering daily routine and serving no possible purpose. In their assumption that rural plantation slavery and formal segregation could not have existed side by side, Woodward and his disciples were substantially correct. (927)
Fischer opposes that Woodward forgot on an unavoidable role of the free Black people which there were more than half million. In his book he refers to Richard C. Wade, who claims that “ante-bellum southern cities demonstrated that racial segregation existed side by side with the “peculiar institution” where personal racial control had been weakened by the complexities of urban slavery”.
On the one hand, the abolition of the slavery may save freedmen’s lives; it gave them possibility to marry and to have their family, but in no way it brought the equality. It rather put more distance based on the color of the skin between people. As Woodward says; the freedom was limited and people were “made painfully and constantly aware that they lived in a society dedicated to the doctrine of white supremacy and Negro inferiority”. (18)
On the other hand, the idea of a white supremacy and inferiority of the Black people did not prevail only in the North. The South did not consider their slaves, lately freedmen equal at all. After the Civil war and during the Reconstruction years people in the South rebelled the Reconstruction atmosphere. The awareness of the defeat and the loss of their “possession” (slaves) were very hard to accept. The peak of all was the fact that they were expected to let freedmen to participate in the political life. The fact that they should give a power in the hands of their former slaves was unimaginable. Eric Fonter in his essay “Black Reconstruction Leaders at the Grass Roots” shows the level of the life of the freedmen in one of the letters from five Black men from Alabama. “We are more slave today in the hand of the wicked than we were before… We need protection… only a standing army in this place can give us our right and life.” (8)
Jim Crow laws were established in order to prevent the Black people to act as the owners of the place. To show them, where is their place, they segregated the Black people from almost every aspect of their lives; hospitals, schools, jails, theatres, restaurants, churches and commentaries. The whole city parts were completely segregated and districts were often showing if this part was segregated or not as e.g. “Nigger Hill, New Guinea or Little Africa in Cincinnati”. (Woodward 18, 19)
When the Civil war was over and the victorious North was in the position to dictate new rules, the customs and the opinion on the Black people and their existence in the society spread from the North to Southern states. It is also impossible to include every case in this brief analysis; there definitely appeared also exceptions both in the North and in the South, but the main tendencies that characterized the society were shown.
The Civil Rights Cases of 1883
During the inclination to Jim Crow laws there were several famous cases that marked the way of the proceeding segregation. During 1882-1883 several cases were brought in front of the Supreme Court with the similar problematic. These indictments criticized the segregation of the Black people that were excluded from the public buildings (which were only for white people), namely “a hotel dining room in Topeka, Kansas; the opera in New York City; the better seats of a San Francisco theater; and a car set aside for ladies on a train”. Petitioners referred to the Civil Rights Act of 1875 serving as a complement to the Amendments approved after the Civil war. Because the Amendments were operating on the federal level, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 penalized “any owner of a public establishment or conveyance who practiced racial discrimination in the conduct of his or her business”. (“Civil Rights Cases (1883)”)
There were arguments on the both sides speaking against and even for the private discrimination. The Supreme Court finally decided in the ratio 8:1 to support pro personal discrimination arguments. These arguments claimed that the Amendments were operating only on the state levels and that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was “unconstitutional and interfered with the private rights of citizens to use, manage, and protect their businesses and property”. They claimed that federal interference oppresses the rights of the business owners. . (“Civil Rights Cases (1883)”)
This decision was the key moment in the history of the segregation. Since it was legal to separate the Black people in private business, the picture of the South with its sings “Whites only” and “Colored only” begun to form aggressively. (“Civil Rights Cases (1883)”)
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Another crucial decision of the United States Supreme Court that shaped the approach of white people to the Black people was in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. This decision is bounded to the “separate but equal” statement that opened gates to the solid Jim-Crowism. (Weisberger 154, Franklin 342) Most historians agree that this event upheld the color line in the South. This color line could not be broken for another 70 long years when whole generations grew up and died in the “equal” world whose distance from the equality could not be longer.
Homer Plessy travelled in 1892 by the train in the section for white people, although he was supposed to be in the Jim Crow part of the train, which was reserved for the colored people. Therefore he broke the law because since 1890 were colored people forced by the law of the state Louisiana to travel in the Jim Crow sections that were supposed to be “separate but equal”. The fact is that they had in the absolute majority lower standard of accommodation. Judge John H. Ferguson decided that Plessy’s behavior was unconstitutional. Plessy refused to accept Ferguson’s decision and the case ended at the Supreme Court. Arguments of Plessy’s lawyer said that this decision was in dispute to the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court decided in the ratio 7:1 that Fergusson’s decision was legal. (Wormser, “Plessy v. Fergusson (1896)”, History.com Staff, “Plessy v. Fergusson”) Their attitude was supported by this statement:
A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races. ... The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. (Wormser, “Plessy v. Fergusson (1896)”)
Such a decision did not mean only precedent in the USA Jim Crow law decisions but it closed doors to other that would dare to disobey this system. The acting of the Supreme Court confirmed the feeling that constitutionally enacted Amendments have not such a big power and their interpretations by states can be bended to the needs and the mood of the people. (Wormser, “Plessy v. Fergusson (1896)”)
There were few people fighting for the rights of the Black people during the end of the nineteenth century. A greater deal of the attention has attained Booker T. Washington. He made his way through life by himself. His way to education went through Hampton Institute where Washington as a janitor desired to get an education. He was influenced there by Calvinist theology. He was a teacher in the institutions for the Black people and afterwards he started to train the Black teachers and he strived to find an employment for these educated people within the purview of the Tuskegee institute in Alabama that he founded. (Weisberger 110)
His famous speech during opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895 affirmed him as one of the most influential Black personalities in those times. He addressed his speech to everybody; the Black and white people. “One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success.” (Current, et al. 67) Washington advocated the opinion that economic opportunities were the key thing that Black people needed. As the man of a great respect he helped to create Atlanta Compromise, favoring these opportunities to political rights and social privileges. He was persuaded that rights and privileges will follow after people achieve progress in economic. He was praised but also criticized for this attitude. (Current, Garraty, Weinberg 66)
It is hard to say whether his actions were good, but one is certain. His intentions were pure and whole his life he tried to improve the hard situation of the Black people.
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