The Nadir of American Race Relations

How did this country arrive at the point where we have such systemic racial inequality today?

Increasingly historians are claiming it’s a result of the NADIR. The nadir means lowest point, rock bottom-the depths of despair. It describes the years between 1877 to at least 1940.

Yes, the legacy of slavery plays a significant role but historian Rayford Logan argues the nadir of American race relations, saw African Americans relegated to second-class citizenship in every state in the US.

During the nadir:

Southern states in defiance of the 14^th and 15^th amendments removed Blacks from citizenship.
From the end of Reconstruction until WWII over 100,000 blacks were enslaved through “Convict Leasing” in the south.
Nearly 3,500 Blacks were lynched.
Woodrow Wilson won the presidency in 1912 and immediately segregated the federal government.
In the 1920s the KKK rose to its zenith boasting more than 4-million members and openly dominated the governments of Georgia, Indiana and Oregon out west.
Hundreds of confederate monuments were built all over the country.
Over 100 race riots took place, more than in any other period since reconstruction.
In 1921 during the race riot in Tulsa, OK, America’s “Black Wall Street” was destroyed and hundreds of blacks were massacred.

Historian James Loewen says it’s almost unimaginable how racist the US became during the nadir. From coast to coast blacks were attacked and driven out of towns leaving many all-white. Even communities with no black populations passed laws that threatened blacks with death if they remained in town past sundown. By the end of the 1960s, there were at least 10,000 sundown towns across the U.S.

The nadir left Blacks in a dilemma. They had no civil or political rights. This led to extreme poverty and joblessness and family instability and crime, and now blacks were both blamed for their predicament and punished for it as well.

It’s important that people understand that the systemic racism blacks faced during the nadir is directly responsible for the racial disparities we face today. There is not enough space for me to report how local, state and federal laws deliberately and intentionally prohibited Blacks from enjoying the same privileges as whites.

The Social Security Act of 1935 excluded agricultural and domestic workers which directly left out the majority of Blacks from collecting social security during old age.

Name a racial disparity that we face today and you can trace its roots to the nadir. Why didn’t we learn that in our history classes? Without this historical backdrop it’s easy to gaslight the victims and conclude that Blacks are themselves responsible for their condition. That’s why history is so instructive. When we start being honest about Black history, everyone benefits because Black history is critical to the American story and to understanding our present circumstances.

The past can inform us and show us how it influences the present if we learn its lessons. As historian Runoko Rashidi says: “We understand that we cannot live in the past, but the past surely lives in us, and that past is not dead and history is not finished.”

When the Nazis were defeated in Germany, author Heather Horn says the German people eventually came to grips with their complicity and owned their sins, paying homage to the victims rather than the perpetrators. America has done just the opposite. We built monuments to the confederacy and acted as if the south won the civil war. Blacks have paid an unbearable toll for this injustice ever since.

Indifference to Black suffering is longstanding in this country. Frederick Douglass said: “We have worked without wages, we have lived without hope, wept without sympathy and bled without mercy.”

Police violence against Blacks is equally unending. But this time when George Floyd’s life was snuffed out in front of our eyes, the nation was watching. It took his tragic death to force this country to finally look inward. The pundits are saying that for once things feel different as throngs take to the streets worldwide and demand justice for African Americans. Will we finally come together to “correct” the past or will we come apart?

References:

Blackmon, A. Douglas. (2009) Slavery by Another Name. (Anchor Books}.

Fain, Kimberly. (2017) The Devastation of Black Wall Street https://daily.jstor.org/the-devastation-of-black-wall-street/.

Ginzburg, Ralph. (1988) 100 Years of Lynchings. (Black Classic Press).

Gordon, Linda. (2017) The Second Coming of the KKK.

Horn, S. Heather. (2019) Facing Up to the Past, German-Style: What can the United States learn from Germany’s efforts to reckon with the Holocaust? https://newrepublic.com/article/155546/facing-past-german-style

Little, Becky (2017). How the U.S. got so many Confederate Monuments. https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments

Loewen, W. James. (2018). Lies My Teacher Told me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.

Loewen, W. James. (2018) Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. The New Press.

Logan, W. Rayford.(1954).The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901 (Dial Press).

Rothstein, Richard. (2017) The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Staff. Race Riots (2006) Teaching Tolerance magazine.

Yellin, S. Eric. (2013). Racism in the Nation’s Service. The University of North Carolina Press.