What has Black America gained politically, socially, economically, psychologically, and existentially since enslavement?

Part Two

The Negro/Black

As we saw in part one, it is difficult to define who is Black, and equally so is defining the exact point at which the categorization of these enslaved African changes from Negro to Black. Following emancipation, Blacks cautiously explored the limits of freedom. It was challenging to unacquire the habits of subservience, forced good humour, and pretended ignorance that had been beaten into them for over two centuries. However, this soon changed; Blacks wanted land, education, and the vote, as well as seeking lost family, officially getting married, and freeing their churches from white domination. Having been promised land, the federal government fell short, and instead of landowners, the majority of Blacks became tenants and sharecroppers.
The Freedmen’s Bureau led the way in establishing schools for the freedmen. Blacks had a passion for education, but there were not enough schools, especially in the rural areas, and the schools available were racially segregated. At the end of the Civil War, 95% of Blacks couldn’t read or write; this number reduced to 81% in 1870, then 64% in 1876, and by 1890, Black education showed self-sufficiency as one-third of the teaching staff in the South Carolina’s Black schools was Black. This then was reflected in the gains made in higher education with the opening of Black colleges, which nurtured most of the Black leaders of the next generation, such as Hampton Institute; Booker T. Washington, Morehouse; Dr Martin Luther King, Howard; Thurgood Marshall and Kamala Harris; Fisk University; John Lewis, and Spelman College; Marian Wright Edelman.

In an attempt to attack poor White farmers, the wealthy Southerners protected the freedman’s right to vote as the Blacks were no threat to the rich man’s status, and they believed they could control the Black man’s political conduct. Blacks were office-holders, sat in state legislatures, and at least one Black Congressman was returned to every election in 1900, except 1886. However, Black civil rights were eroded when the Supreme Court decision deprived Blacks of the guarantee of equal treatment under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875. In the United States v Cruikshank (1875), the court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protected the rights and privileges of citizens only when the state’s action infringed on them. In the Civil Rights Cases that followed in 1883, the court ruled that the Civil Rights Act (1875) forbidding racial discrimination in public places was unconstitutional. This meant that Blacks could not be protected against discrimination from private individuals, and this paved the way for segregation. Before this, schools, churches, and towns were segregated, but now, hotels, theatres, railroads, and streetcars are segregated, too. Later, the Mississippi v. Williams (1898) Supreme Court Hearing approved the indirect exclusion of Blacks from voting by introducing literacy tests that were framed and designed to disqualify Blacks who failed to satisfy local registrars of their ability to understand the Constitution. In addition, a poll tax was introduced, and the Southern states introduced state-wide Democratic primaries from which Blacks were excluded. In Louisiana, the Black vote fell from 130,344 in 1896 to 5,320 in 1900.

Following the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the attempt by Donald Trump and Republican officials to overturn the election, Republican lawmakers initiated more than 361 bills to restrict voting access, which were introduced across 47 states. The aim was to limit mailing-in voters, shorten early voting, strengthen voter ID laws, curb the use of ballot drop boxes, and eliminate automatic and same-day voter restriction. It has been suggested that this would facilitate the removal of Blacks and other disadvantaged groups from the voter rolls. This has been deemed an effort more significant than any contraction of ballot access in the U.S. since the end of Reconstruction. Where else have we seen this in Europe? In 2019, the British Conservative Party was accused of trying to initiate voter suppression in the form of requiring photographic ID with the sole aim of disenfranchising the poor and ethnic minorities. This would be made possible because, in 2019, approximately 3.5 million citizens could not access a photo ID, passport, or driver’s license. Therefore, with fewer minorities able to vote, the conservatives could lobby the Boundary Commission to give the regions of Britain with more significant numbers of minorities fewer seats.

In 1887, Florida passed the first Jim Crow laws, which required separate accommodations for the races in trains, and other states followed this. Only to be challenged in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Cumming v. Board of Education (1899), where the Supreme Court upheld the separate but equal principle, which is still prevalent today even though the sanctions are not as rigid and comprehensive as before. This resulted in White Supremacy campaigns of lynching, castrating, rape, torture, mutilation, burning at the stake, and killing to keep Blacks in their place. In the U.S., 21st-century segregation still exists in education, the criminal justice system, health, housing, and prisons. In 2013, 38% of Blacks went to schools where 10% of their peers were White. Private places such as theatres, restaurants, bars, and places of worship are too segregated. Similar segregation practices are standard in parts of the world that the West colonized, such as Australia, South Africa, and Brazil, and in Europe, countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Scandinavian countries.

Next week, part three will discuss the Atlanta and Illinois riots and the joining of forces between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and The Niagara Movement.