03/23/2024
ADHD got a hold of me and sent me down a rabbit hole of Reconstruction. Everyone thinks the Lincoln presidency was the most defining one for Black people on account of the emancipation of the formerly enslaved. However, just a short 11 years after this "emancipation", during the era of Reconstruction, the highly contested Presidential election of 1876 was much more defining. Teh popular vote called for the Democratic Candidate (Tilden). However, Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate for President rolled back union soldier enforcement in the South, which was the only protection Black folks had, and granted states the right to make governing decisions of their own, so long as they complied with the federal laws.
They did not. Within six years, the initiation of Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, redlining, gerrymandering, and unjust taxation would result in the imprisoned population going from 80% white to 80% black. This would also begin an era of the prison-industrial complex, which is still alive and well today. America houses 25% of the world's imprisoned population; a disproportionate amount of those people are Black.
Both this acts, the Emancipation & th esubsequent desertion of Black People were in an effrot to preserve the Union. The same party that "freed the slaves" worked with their former enslavers to maintain their party's control in government. And it would take another 100 years, countless protests and lives lost, and what would never be called but should be considered another civil war, before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 woould go into effect. And in 2024, we're still fighting to take our rightful place among the American society as citizens fully endowed with the uninalieable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of carrying on with our Godblessed business.
I NEVER learned about this in school. And when I used to have conversations with diehard Republicans that claim the Republican party is more just than the Democrats, citing Lincoln and the Emancipation, I would be stumped for a rebuttle. Not anymore.
SCREW YOU RUTHERFRAUD!!
