Lincoln's assassination was the literal and metaphorical shot that was clear signal that while slavery was illegal in the US, white supremacy cannot be eradicated through law.
Congress passed four Reconstruction acts, which "divided the former Confederacy into five military districts, each ruled by a military general."
One doesn't need a great imagination to understand that white supremacists in the South were not happy with this.
And, the southern states were required to draft new constitutions, and "Congress made readmission to the Union contingent on the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment."
So far, so good.
But then came the elections of 1876. Electoral politics took the United States on another path altogether.
The Party of Lincoln lost, but "disputed the returns in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina." I suppose even back then Florida was the eye of the presidential election hurricane!
Another compromise, a bargain, resulted. In order to retain the Oval Office, the Party of Lincoln "abandoned a century long fight for civil rights."
The military withdrew. The southern white supremacists regained power. The KKK's terror campaigns stepped up. Jim Crow laws came into effect. "Tennessee passed the first Jim Crow law, in 1881, mandating the separation of blacks and whites in railroad cars." Separate streetcars. Separate bibles in courthouses. Separate windows at post offices. Separate dining areas.
The law extended even to children: "In Birmingham, for a black child to play checkers with a white child in a public park became a crime."
As Jill Lepore notes, "slavery had ended, segregation had only begun."
Is this when America was great for the current president and his racist voters to make it great again?
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