Populism, Racism, Conspiracism, Marxism

hoov hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Tue Nov 30 11:03:50 PST 1999



> On the one hand it is important to point to the cooperation between black
> and white sharecroppers, even if it was flawed and failed in the end of
> the period. On the other hand, 10's of thousands of whites in the Union
> Army took the ultimate risk and sacrifice in the Civil War, which was
> popularly understood to have the abolition of slavery as one of its main
> goals. So, the Civil War itself had significant precedent for
> anti-racist struggle by whites.
> CB

Also, Reconstruction-era governments were temporary - class-based - alliances of newly enfranchised black males and white small landholding males that shifted tax burden upwards, created common schools, made infrastructural improvements. Compromise of 1877 signalled end - white southern Bourbon Democrats who had never been completely vanquished agreed to *allow* Republican Hayes to become president in exchange for white northern Republicans dropping support for black civil liberties/rights. More specifically, southern planters and northern industrial bourgeoisie came to an understanding. Wave of 'white terror' in south following removal of Union troops coincided with bourgeois reaction and suppression of railroad strike in north. Michael Hoover



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