-But you can't sustain your argument if you admit Reconstruction was flawed -from Day One, can you? As MLK argued, if you don't have the money for -lunch, being allowed to sit at the lunch-counter isn't much of a victory. -Reconstruction wasn't helped by the courts. But it wasn't adequate way -before the courts got involved. This society's troubles go deeper than the -courts.
Incomplete is not the same as flawed, except in the minds of folks who demand all or nothing, today or never. A whole series of economic rights were protected under Reconstruction, even if full-scale land reform was not accomplished.
But the fact is that once blacks lost the right to vote, they lost any ability to organize for further economic reform.
And being murdered with impunity-- which the Supreme Court sanctioned -- is far worse than "not helping." It is one of the gross acts of evil by the government, authored by the Supreme Court against the wishes of the elected government.
There is a deep, ideological desire by certain sectors of the Left to diminish the sacrifice and organizing in the post-Civil War era that forced passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and forced passage of the 1866, 1870, 1871 and 1875 Civil Rights Acts. Partly, it reflects the anti-democratic values of that part of the left which can't acknowledge that the democratic polity would have supported real advances in social justice, preferring to believe that elite judges are a better defender of individual rights given the worthlessness of mass democracy.
But the fact remains that post-Civil War, the US Congress made all segregation in public accomodations illegal, banned and prosecuted Klan violence, and passed laws broadly protecting the right to vote. Because people forget this history, they rarely acknowledge that the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts were not innovative law but merely restoring what had largely been enacted into law nearly 100 years earlier. Those original laws were not repealed by the federal elected branches but were repealed by court decree.
Nathan Newman
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
[mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Nathan Newman
> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 11:56 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] End of Black Reconstruction (was Why I
HateCourts-
> -orhow judicial review destroyed the country)
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Dawson" <MDawson at pdx.edu>
> -Nathan also views Reconstruction too narrowly -- as being just a matter
> of
> -"turning slaves into voters." Of course, what Reconstruction was really
> -about was turning slaves into voters AND landowners. The latter half of
> -that formula never got off the ground. Grant's troops started giving
> -slavemasters "their" plantations back before the dust from the war had
> even
> -settled.
>
> Reconstruction was what it was-- which was a civil rights and voting
> rights
> victory. Many people wanted more in the economic sphere, but that's not
> what happened. And the question is why Reconstruction as it was, not
what
> people wished it was, was destroyed by Klan violence in the South.
>
> And when the Supreme Court declared that the Klan and its sister
> organizations could not be prosecuted under federal law, it gave them
full
> freedom to end Reconstruction. That was what caused the destruction of
> Reconstruction and led to another century of Jim Crow subjugation in the
> South.
>
>
> Nathan Newman
>
>
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