ku klux klan

Redemption Era of Jim Crow, Reconstruction Ends after Contested 1876 Election
Civil War and Reconstruction

After Grant: Southern Redemption and Jim Crow, Reconstruction Ends after Contested 1876 Election

11/09/2024 Bruce Strom 0

What were his greatest accomplishments? Chernow states that “Grant showed a deep reservoir of courage in directing the fight against the Ku Klux Klan and crushing the largest wave of domestic terrorism in American history. It was Grant who helped to weave the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteen Amendments into the basic fabric of American life.”
Chernow rues: “Once Reconstruction collapsed, it left southern blacks for eighty years at the mercy of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics designed to segregate them from whites and deny them the vote. Black sharecroppers would be degraded to the level of debt-ridden serfs, bound to their former plantation owners. After 1877, the black community in the South steadily lost ground until a rigid apartheid separated the races completely, a terrible state of affairs that would not be fixed until the rise of the civil rights movement after World War II.” […]

President Ulysses S Grant, White Supremacy Triumphs, and Gilded Age Corruption During his Second Term
Civil War and Reconstruction

President Ulysses S Grant, White Supremacy Triumphs, and Gilded Age Corruption During his Second Term

10/27/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Why was President Grant easily reelected to second term, when there were so many problems faced in his first term? Why did the Liberal Republican Party become a third party? Was it truly liberal? Why did the Union Army fight several battles in Louisiana after the Civil War? How did […]

President Ulysses S Grant, First Term, Battling the KKK, Fighting for Civil Rights
Civil War and Reconstruction

President Ulysses S Grant, First Term, Defeating the KKK, Fighting for Civil Rights

10/26/2024 Bruce Strom 1

Ulysses S Grant won the presidential race handily. Although he won only 53% of the popular vote, he won the electoral college vote by a landslide, 214-80. “Bolstered by black and white carpetbagger votes, all southern states, with the notable exception of Georgia and Louisiana, where Klan violence was rife, tumbled into the Republican column. White violence had also diminished Republican turnout in Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina.”
Grant’s acceptance speech was curt, as usual. “The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept them without fear, if I can have the same support which has been given to me thus far.”
Former General Grant too often made decisions without asking for advice from more politically astute advisors, behaving like a general fearful of leaks tipping off enemy forces. His success as a general made him too complacent. Many years later, in hindsight, Grant expressed his regrets. “I entered the White House as President without any previous experience either in civil or political life. I thought I could run the government of the United States as I did the staff of my army. It was my mistake, and it led me into other mistakes.” […]

General Grant Post-Civil War and Reconstruction
Civil War and Reconstruction

General Grant Supporting Civil Rights and Reconstruction After the Civil War, and His Conflicts with Andrew Johnson

08/30/2024 Bruce Strom 1

When the new Congress convened, the House Judiciary Committee voted by a 5 to 4 vote to impeach President Johnson. When the Senate overwhelmingly voted to restore Stanton as Secretary of War, Grant vacated his interim position. In the upcoming political struggle, as Chernow relates, “The worse things looked for Andrew Johnson, the brighter was the political future for Grant. In early February, the New York Republican Convention endorsed Grant for President.”
During the Senate trial, Grant argued privately with Congressmen on the need to convict Johnson, but he thought it would be inappropriate for him to appear during the Senate trial. Chernow puts it best: “During the war, Grant had learned that it was better to let power seek him rather than to pursue it; a good general waited to be summoned by his superiors.”
In the end, Johnson was acquitted by one vote. Seven Republicans in total voted to acquit, as they did not think that Johnson’s actions were not the high crimes and misdemeanors that the Constitution declared were needed for impeachment. Ulysses S Grant would handily win the 1868 Presidential election, and Grant’s Presidency will be featured in a future reflection. […]

NAACP Attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston Challenge Jim Crow in the Courts
Civil Rights

NAACP Attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston Challenge Jim Crow in the Courts

02/14/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Chief Justice Fred Vinson scheduled oral arguments for December 1952, but the justices were hopelessly fractured, Vinson did not want to abandon Plessy. A second round of oral arguments were scheduled for December 1953, but Chief Justice Fred Vinson died of a heart attack in September. After attending his funeral, Justice Felix Frankfurter quipped to a friend, “This is the first indication I have ever had that there is a god.”
President Eisenhower appointed long-time Republican Earl Warren as Chief Justice, he later said this was his life’s “biggest damn fool mistake.” Earl Warren convinced his fellow justices that this needed to be a unanimous decision. Warren said this, summarizing the court’s opinion, “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other tangible factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.” […]

Martin Luther King, Bloody Struggles in Mississippi and Selma, Lewis’ Biography
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Bloody Struggles in Mississippi and Selma, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 8-9

01/24/2024 Bruce Strom 2

After the Selma march, Martin Luther King delivered another rousing speech. “They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said we would only get her over their dead bodies, but all the world together knows that we are here and that we are standing” in “Alabama saying, ‘Ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around.’” “Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote.” “The threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and white masses alike resulted in establishing a segregated society. They segregated Southern money from the poor whites; they segregated Southern churches from Christianity; they segregated Southern minds from honest thinking, and they segregated the Negro from everything.” […]

Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Speech, March on Washington DC, Biography
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Speech, March on Washington DC, Biography Chapter 8

01/19/2024 Bruce Strom 4

MLK’s I Have a Dream Speech begins: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.” […]

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality, Biography Chapter 7

01/17/2024 Bruce Strom 2

In September 1963, a black church in Birmingham was dynamited, killing four young girls and injuring several dozen others. Addressing the nation on television, President Kennedy proclaimed, “This nation is committed to a course of domestic justice and tranquility.” “If these cruel and tragic events can awaken that city and state, if they can awaken this entire nation,” “then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost.” But no whites attended the funeral services of these four young black girls. […]

Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 4-6

01/15/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Martin Luther King was vigorously campaigning for voting rights. In his first national address, he proclaimed, “Give us the ballot. Give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.” “Give us the ballot and we will fill the legislature with men of goodwill. Give us the ballot and we will get the people judges who love mercy. Give us the ballot and we will quietly, lawfully, and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement” the US Supreme Court Brown decision. Ensuring that blacks have the right to vote was the key civil rights objective in the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War. […]

General Longstreet and Reconstruction
Civil Rights

Terror During Reconstruction, White League Confronts General Longstreet and Union Army

02/10/2023 Bruce Strom 3

We will tell the stories of General Longstreet and the Union Major Merrill. General James Longstreet, a former Confederate general who had become a pariah in the South when he changed his party affiliation to Lincoln’s Republican Party, tried to prevent the insurrection in New Orleans. For his second posting during Reconstruction, Major Merrill attempted to reverse the insurrection of parishes on the outskirts of New Orleans. […]