Stamped from the Beginning

William Lloyd Garrison is delighted by the Fifteenth Amendment, which he considers a “miracle.” Some celebrate the amendment as a chance for Black people to develop political autonomy, but others warn that voting will do little to save them from the terror of the Klan and other white supremacist vigilantes. The Klan demonizes ordinary Black people, white antiracists and other “radicals,” and—most of all—Black men accused of raping white women. Meanwhile, Kendi writes, the Klan justifies the extreme violence they exert on the basis that they are defending white women’s purity.

Black suffrage does have an impact on the South; there are a substantial number of Northern and Southern Black delegates, some of whom were formerly enslaved. They help found a number of public institutions and stimulate the economy, although Black people are rarely able to reap the benefits of this. The region still remains highly reliant on cheap labor. President Grant resurrects the idea of colonization, suggesting that Black people relocate to the Dominic Republic. Douglass joins this plan, enthusiastic about the racist idea of Black Americans helping “uplift the impoverished and backward Dominican people.” In the 1872 presidential election, a former champion of “emancipation and equality,” Horace Greeley, runs as the Democratic candidate, telling white Southerners: “Segregate yourself; employ each other.”

The year of the election, Congress reproduces a report on Southern violence that blames the violence on expanded Black political power, not the white people that are actually perpetuating that violence. Politicians and the media alike being pronouncing Reconstruction a failure. For many white Republicans, and all Black men in the South, voting to reelect Grant means “risk[ing] death.” In a landmark Supreme Court ruling, the civil rights protections in the Fourteenth Amendment are gutted, effectively allowing discrimination to take place as long as explicitly racist language is not used to justify it. Kendi notes that this legal precedent is still used to shield and enshrine racist discrimination today. 

The Panic of 1873—a financial crisis that triggers a recession—affects poor Black Southerners most intensely. Many lose their land and are forced into sharecropping, which allows them to be exploited by landowners. Witnessing this erosion of civil rights, Garrison writes a series of articles denouncing the “abandonment” of Reconstruction. Yet many other commentators, even those who claim to support the racial equality and freedom promised by Reconstruction, blame Black people for its failure. Meanwhile, Grant’s every act of support for Black people deepens his unpopularity. His time as a key player in the political arena, like Garrison’s, is up. 

In 1875, Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, the final piece of legislation from the “Radical Reconstruction” era. This bill makes racial discrimination in a number of public institutions illegal. However, this legal protection is not enough to stop Black Southerners from being terrorized by ordinary white people, nor does it stop the resurrection of slavery by another name. Grant realizes that white people in the South are resentful of being prevented from killing Black people and Republicans with impunity. At the same time, the early field of criminology is developing extensive ideas of Black people as naturally lawless, violent, and depraved.

Furious white people promise to bring about the “redemption of the South,” a promise that ends up being fulfilled. The 1876 presidential election is extremely close; the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes is declared the winner by a narrow margin. A second Civil War seems imminent; Grant privately regrets extending suffrage to Black men. In order to quell the growing conflict, Hayes arranges the Bargain of 1877, promising to end Reconstruction in order to save his presidency and avoid war. The Bargain is immediately recognized as a move to eliminate Black people’s role in the political world, and Garrison denounces it as a return to the “covenant with death” (slavery).

While Democrats proclaim that the new rights granted to Black people will remain in place, this is far from the case. In order to reestablish control over “rebellious Blacks and White women” white men enact a new reign of terror: lynching. While lynching is an obvious manifestation of hate, lurking behind this hate is not ignorance, but a complex system of racist ideas produced by discriminatory policies implemented by the white elite.

The journey from Emancipation through Reconstruction and its demise was an emotional one for Black Southerners. Many felt unable to continue living among their former enslavers and sought freedom in the North. In April 1879, Garrison cancels what would have been his final speech due to illness, speaking via a proxy instead. He remains resolutely optimistic about the possibility of imminent racial equality freedom. Within a month, he is dead.