white supremacy

Examples of white supremacy in the following topics:

• The Transformed South

  • After the Civil War, the South was thrown into turmoil as many whites faced their former slaves as equals.
  • The fact that former slaves now held political and military power angered many whites, and this gave rise to movements such as the KKK and other white supremacist organizations.
  • Most white members of both the planter/business class and common farmer class of the South opposed black power and sought white supremacy.
  • According to Fleming (1907) the KKK "quieted the Negroes, made life and property safer, gave protection to women, stopped burnings, forced the Radical leaders to be more moderate, made the Negroes work better, drove the worst of the Radical leaders from the country and started the whites on the way to gain political supremacy. "
  • Conservative reaction continued in both the North and South; the "white liners" movement to elect candidates dedicated to white supremacy reached as far as Ohio in 1875.

• Conservative Resurgence

  • Many Southern whites were frustrated by the social changes after the Civil War and formed conservative political organizations.
  • The fact that their former slaves now held political and military power angered many whites.
  • Most white members of both the planter/business class and common farmer class of the South opposed black power, Carpetbaggers and military rule and sought white supremacy.
  • Reaction by the angry whites included the formation of violent secret societies, especially the KKK.
  • Conservative reaction continued in both the North and South; the "white liners" movement to elect candidates dedicated to white supremacy reached as far as Ohio in 1875.

• White Terror

  • "White terror" refers to white supremacy groups formed in the South in reaction to recently freed African-Americans after the Civil War.
  • The White League was a white paramilitary group started in 1874 that worked to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing.
  • Historians generally see the KKK as part of the post-Civil-War insurgent violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy.
  • This is a white mans government.
  • Describe how white supremacy groups responded to social and political changes after the Civil War.

• The Ku Klux Klan

  • The Ku Klux Klan, an organization promoting white supremacy and anti-immigration, peaked in its prominence during the 1920s.
  • The KKK advocates extreme reactionary, and often violent, agendas such as white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigration, and, since the mid-20th century, anti-communist.
  • Members adopted white costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying and to hide their identities.
  • Most were lower- to middle-class whites trying to protect their jobs and housing from waves of newcomers to the industrial cities.
  • He was convicted of second degree murder for his part in the rape and subsequent death of Madge Oberholtzer, a white, 29-year-old election official.

• Change in the Democratic Party

  • The racial tension within the Republican Party was exacerbated because poor whites resented the job competition from freedmen.
  • They also worked to reestablish white supremacy.
  • As Democrats took over state legislatures, they worked to change voter registration rules to strip most blacks and many poor whites of their ability to vote.
  • George Henry White, the last Southern black of the post-Reconstruction period to serve in Congress, retired in 1901, leaving Congress completely white.
  • Republicans attacked the Democrats as being insincere about reform, committed to states' rights at the expense of national unity and to white supremacy at the expense of civil rights.

• "Poor Whites"

  • "Poor whites" were the lowest white class in the antebellum south; in spite of their poverty, most still supported the Confederacy.
  • In his study of Edgefield County, South Carolina, Orville Vernon Burton classified white society into three groups: the poor, the yeoman middle class (also called the plain folk of the Old South), and the elite.
  • However, Stephanie McCurry argues that yeomen were clearly distinguished from poor whites because yeoman owned land.
  • Wetherington (2005) argues that the plain folk (of Georgia) supported secession in the name of their families, homes, and notions of white liberty.
  • White supremacy and masculinity depended on slavery, which Lincoln's Republicans threatened.

• Conclusion: The Effects of Reconstruction

  • Reconstruction was a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States, but most historians consider it a failure because the South became a poverty-stricken backwater attached to agriculture, while white Southerners attempted to re-establish dominance through violence, intimidation and discrimination, forcing freedmen into second class citizenship with limited rights, and excluding them from the political process.
  • The Dunning School considered failure inevitable because they felt that taking the right to vote or hold office away from Southern whites was a violation of republicanism.
  • A fourth school sees the major reason for failure of reconstruction as the states' inability to suppress the violence of Southern whites when they sought reversal for blacks' gains.
  • Although legally equal, black Americans were subject to segregation laws in South, violence at the hands of white supremacy groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and political disfranchisement by state constitutions from 1890 to 1908 that effectively barred most blacks and many poor whites from voting.
  • The legalization of African-American marriage and family and the independence of black churches from white denominations were a source of strength during the Jim Crow era.

• Reconstruction in the South

  • Justice Department and the U.S. military to suppress white insurgency and support Republican reconstructed states.
  • The deployment of the U.S. military was central to the establishment of Southern Reconstructed state governments and the suppression of violence against black and white voters.
  • Reconstruction was a remarkable chapter in the story of American freedom, but most historians consider it a failure because the region became a poverty-stricken backwater, and whites re-established their supremacy, making the freedmen second-class citizens by the start of the twentieth century.
  • The South's white leaders, who held power in the immediate postwar era before the vote was granted to the freedmen, renounced secession and slavery, but not white supremacy.
  • New Republican lawmakers were elected by a coalition of white Unionists, freedmen, and Northerners who had settled in the South.

• White Society in the South

  • Stephanie McCurry argues that yeomen were clearly distinguished from poor whites by their ownership of land.
  • The principle of white supremacy, accepted by almost all white southerners of all classes, made slavery seem legitimate, natural, and essential for a civilized society.
  • White racism in the South was sustained by official systems of repression such as the "slave codes" and elaborate codes of speech, behavior, and social practices illustrating the subordination of blacks to whites.
  • Serving as slave "patrollers" and "overseers" offered white southerners positions of power and honor.
  • Only a small minority of free white Southerners owned plantations in the antebellum era.

• The "Nadir of Race Relations" and the Great Migration

  • The early 1900s marked the low point in 20th-century race relations between white Americans and African Americans.
  • Many came to believe that only white people had the power to destroy white supremacy and the racist economic, political, cultural, and social networks that supported it.
  • In the South, white people worried about the loss of their labor force and so frequently tried to block the black migration.
  • A white gang looking for African Americans during the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.
  • Evaluate race relations in the early 20th century, noting the tensions among whites, African Americans, and European immigrants