Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 -1968 ) in his autobiography, tries to explain objectively the institutional and political contradictions which exist in America\u2019s political culture , between the democratic political guidelines of a Constitutional Democracy and actual government policy towards its citizens, especially its Afro-American citizens. Martin Luther King emphasizes that ,\u2019\u2019\u2026We cannot have an enlightened democracy, with one great group living in ignorance. We cannot have a healthy nation with one-tenth of the people ill-nourished , sick, harboring germs of disease which recognize no color line \u2013obey no Jim Crow laws. We cannot have a nation orderly and sound with one group so ground down and thwarted that it is almost forced into unsocial attitude and crime\u2026\u2019\u2019.(p.9, The autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson, Warner Books 1998)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The first and most critical political indicator of this democratic dysfunction in America\u2019s political culture and American governance entails the vital political question as to who is legally and constitutionally considered a full citizen of the American state and a legitimate participant in the political workings of a Constitutional Democracy, with its elected federal and state political representatives.<\/p>\n
Even with the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln(1861-1865), issued on January 1, 1863, and the 13th Amendment to the American Constitution which was passed on December 6, 1865, imposing the total abolition of slavery, as well as the 14th Amendment(1868) defining American civil rights and finally, the 15th Amendment(1870), ensuring the rights of citizens to vote under government protection, Afro-Americans \u2018\u2019pragmatically\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019practically\u2019\u2019 acquired their civil right to vote only through the Voting Rights Act which was passed in August 1965,\u00a0\u00a0 by the American Congress. This government Act prohibited states and local governments from passing laws that discriminated against voters on the basis of race.(https:\/\/courseshumanlearning.com<\/a>). This means that it took almost 100 years from the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868, for Afro-Americans to finally secure their civil status and their civil right to vote as American citizens!!!<\/p>\n The same type of government \u2018\u2019maneuvering\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019stalling\u2019\u2019 occurred with the Native Americans , who had been granted the right to vote by the 15th Amendment passed in 1870, but practically could not vote due to their \u2018\u2019special civil status\u2019\u2019 in the Indian Reservations , established during the end of the 19th century. This created \u2018\u2019theoretically\u2019\u2019 a semi-autonomous political status under the direct control of the Central Government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.<\/p>\n The Snyder Act of 1924, finally recognized Native Americans as full citizens of the United States and their right to vote in federal and state elections. Nevertheless, Native Americans were still prevented from fully participating in elections because the American Constitution had left it up to the states to decide who had the right to vote. After the passage of the 1924 Citizenship Bill, it still took over 40 years for all fifty states to allow Native Americans to vote.(https:\/\/www.loc.gov<\/a>)<\/p>\n This political process was finalized due to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which permitted the federal government to supersede state governments and state laws for political matters which affected the American population as a whole, in all the states, similar to the national defense of the country or the country\u2019s foreign policy. This had also been the case with the civil rights of all Afro-Americans during the last 250 years.<\/p>\n Finally, we have the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, granting women the right to vote and providing Congress with the powers to enforce this article through federal legislation. At the time the American Constitution was drafted\u00a0\u00a0 by the American colonies in 1776, women were not considered as citizens equal to men, and could not vote, while Afro-Americans who were mostly slaves, were regarded as property, and as such, had no civil rights. This means that women in American society became legally accepted as full American citizens, with full civil rights, almost 150 years after the founding of the United States in 1776.<\/p>\n The one historical event in American history which clearly and objectively demonstrates the institutional characteristics of a political dysfunction and a lack of social integration and unity within the Constitutional Democracy of the United States, has to be the American Civil War(1861-1865), almost 100 years after the founding of the American state.<\/p>\n The American Civil War(1861-1865) represented a serious societal conflict between two political cultures within the same nation. It was the industrial northern states ,supporting economic and political innovation with a pluralistic society which rejected black slavery , and on the other hand, there were the agricultural southern states whose socio-political pillars were a landed aristocracy and a large black slave population of over 4 million individuals. The main political focus of the American Civil War was the abolition of slavery in all of the American states. This political position was initiated by the Republican government of President Abraham Lincoln(1861-1865), and supported by the Union of most Northern states. Opposed to the position of the Central government to abolish slavery in the wholeof the country was a Confederation of Southern states, which wanted black slavery to be maintained as a legitimate and legal societal institution.<\/p>\n During the 5 years of the American Civil War, there were between 620,000 and 750,000 casualties in total, more than the number of U.S. military deaths in all other American wars combined. The Union of northern American states had 224,580 deaths from disease, 110,000 killed in action, 275,154 wounded in action, and 30,192 who died as prisoners of war(POWs). The Confederation of southern states had 164,000 deaths from disease, 94,000 killed in action, 194,026 wounded in action, and 31,000 who died as prisoners of war(POWs).(https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n The cost of the American Civil War for the Confederation of southern states was 22.99 billion dollars adjusted to the dollar\u2019s 2019 value, while the cost to the Union of northern states was 68.17 billion dollars adjusted to the dollar\u2019s 2019 value.(https:\/\/www.usatoday.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n The northern states representing the Central government of President Abraham Lincoln with its capital in Washington D.C., had defeated the southern rebel states, initially taking military control of the territory making up the southern slave states. In 1867, American Congress divided the south into military districts to help restore and maintain the political legitimacy of the American Central Government.<\/p>\n Military personnel was sent to the south to organize and govern the military districts, and they stayed for more than 10 years.\u2019\u2019\u2026This time is called \u2018\u2019congressional\u2019\u2019 or \u2018\u2019military\u2019\u2019 Reconstruction(in contrast to the initial period of \u2018\u2019presidential\u2019\u2019 Reconstruction). Other Northerners go south to teach, to work with aid programs, to help the state governments to get going again- and sometimes to make money for themselves\u2026\u2019\u2019.(p.164, Freedom, a history of U.S., Hakim, Joy, Oxford University Press, 2003)<\/p>\n Before we examine and analyze historically , the \u2018\u2019official\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019unofficial\u2019\u2019 American government policy with respect to Afro-Americans, I would like to state my own position or make my own political judgement concerning this particular American government policy and the societal status of Afro-Americans within the country\u2019s political culture.<\/p>\n After many readings(books, articles, newspapers) and the information I was receiving from American television when I was growing up in Canada in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, I firmly believe that since the founding of the United States in 1776 until today, the White American political and economic establishments, as well as White American society, for the most part, have \u2018\u2019tried their very best\u2019\u2019 to create, manipulate and impose those socio-political and socio-economic obstacles which would prevent the \u2018\u2019real emancipation\u2019\u2019 of Afro-Americans.<\/p>\n A major focus or priority of White American political culture and its American defenders and proponents was to maintain the \u2018\u2019status quo\u2019\u2019 of Afro-Americans as \u2018\u2019second class citizens\u2019\u2019, economically, socially and politically, similar to the Native Americans. White America wants a \u2018\u2019secondary role\u2019\u2019 for the Afro-Americans in defining America\u2019s government policies, its political infrastructure and its economic development.<\/p>\n When the United States was established in 1776, its total population was about 2,5 million people, of which 0.5 million were Afro-Americans, representing about 22% of the total population, the great majority being slaves(https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/a>).When the American Constitution was drafted, the Articles that referred to Afro-Americans were \u2018\u2019indirect\u2019\u2019, mentioned in the context of \u2018\u2019slavery\u2019\u2019. Slavery was considered as a legal and legitimate socio-economic institution , protected by the government , while Afro-Americans were categorized as \u2018\u2019the three-fifths of all other persons\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n In Article I , Section 2, the Afro-Americans are classified as \u2018\u2019the three-fifths of all other persons\u2019\u2019 because they are to be calculated in estimating the population of each American state , which will finally determine the number of Representatives each state is allowed to send to Congress, as well as the amount of direct taxes it will have to pay to the Central Government. The \u2018\u2019three-fifths\u2019\u2019 of a person was a compromise reached between the southern and northern American states, the first having the largest concentration of Afro-Americans, the great majority being slaves.<\/p>\n Article I , Section 9, and Article IV, Section 2 of the American Constitution, dealt with Afro-Americans not as citizens but as \u2018\u2019chattels\u2019\u2019 , with an economic value which had to be protected and defended legally. The Afro-American was considered as \u2018\u2019chattel\u2019\u2019, like a valuable farm animal, not as a human being. The Afro-American was not a \u2018\u2019regular citizen\u2019\u2019 who had the legal right to defend his or her self-interests or welfare, to be protected by the American government, or the right to participate in the political procedures of a Constitutional Democracy through voting in federal or state elections.(p.99, Freedom-a history of U.S. , Hakim, Joy, Oxford University Press, 2003)<\/p>\n Even though the Emancipation Proclamation is considered to be one of the 10 most important state documents in the history of the United States, the real political justification for it was neither moral or ideological , but \u2018\u2019practical\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019opportunistic\u2019\u2019 . Certainly ,President Abraham Lincoln(1861-1865) as a democratic politician was against slavery as an American socio-economic institution, but the freeing of slaves through the Emancipation Proclamation was a \u2018\u2019strategic act\u2019\u2019 by the President not an \u2018\u2019ideological act\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n We first recognize this, when we consider the historical fact that Abraham Lincoln as President, issued the preliminary draft of the Proclamation on September 22, 1862, stipulating that in the case that the Southern States did not cease their rebellion against the Central Government by January 1, 1863, then the draft would be activated as the law of the land. Therefore, the Proclamation was a political threat to the southern rebel states. The Confederate Southern States did not accept Lincoln\u2019s political proposal or ploy , and the President issued the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.(https:\/\/www.battlefields.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n Similarly, the Emancipation Proclamation was selective and not universal, it would free the slaves who were living in the Southern Rebel States and not in all of the American states. For President Lincoln, the emancipation of the slaves in the rebel states served his political power base and the administrative\u00a0\u00a0 preeminent role\u00a0\u00a0 of the Central Government in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n The first and most crucial one was the economic, political and social \u2018\u2019disruption\u2019\u2019 of these southern states, since the large majority of slaves in the United States lived in these states. In 1860, 90% of Afro-Americans were slaves, and while Afro-Americans made up only 13% of the country\u2019s population, in the South , \u2018\u2019one in three people\u2019\u2019 were Afro-Americans.<\/b>(https:\/\/www.theroot.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n Lincoln\u2019s second focus in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation was to legitimize the means and the reasons to confiscate \u2018\u2019indirectly\u2019\u2019 wealth and property from the southern states, by legally and constitutionally eliminating the legal right of slave owners in the south to possess slaves, a very valuable property and commodity.<\/p>\n The third focus of the Emancipation Proclamation was the strengthening of the country\u2019s Central Government and especially that of the President\u2019s executive war powers.<\/p>\n The fourth reason was the political support Lincoln\u2019s government would receive from Afro-Americans within the Union States as well as from Afro-Americans within the slave or Confederate States. In the emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln declared that all Afro-Americans who were in good physical condition would be received into the armed forces of the United States.\u2019\u2019\u2026Five months after the Proclamation took effect; the War Department of the United States issued General Orders No. 143, establishing the United States Colored Troops(USCT) . By the end of the war, over 200,000 African-Americans would serve the Union army and navy\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.battlefields.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n Finally, within a moral and ideological context , Abraham Lincoln who was against slavery, even though through the Proclamation he initially freed only the slaves in the rebellious states, by the end of the Civil War (12 April 1861- 9 April 1865) , the Proclamation had influenced all American citizens to support and accept the abolition for all Afro-American slaves in both the North and South, while also promoting their civil rights.<\/p>\n The Thirteenth Amendment of the American Constitution was passed through Congress in December 1865, abolishing slavery in the whole United States.<\/p>\n The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in July 1868, which defined citizenship and gave protection to a citizen\u2019s civil rights from being denied by the federal and state governments. This Amendment was bitterly contested by the former slave states of the South with their large Afro-American populations, because it granted and protected the American citizenship for all Afro-Americans.<\/p>\n The Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was ratified in February 1870 by the American Congress, prohibiting the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race. This Amendment was essentially directed to the Southern states who were trying through Congress to introduce legal impediments like \u2018\u2019literacy tests\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019poll taxes\u2019\u2019, to obstruct the political emancipation of Afro-Americans , which would ensure their civil rights as American citizens.(https:\/\/cung.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n One could say that President Abraham Lincoln through his government policies concerning \u2018\u2019black slavery\u2019\u2019 ,reflected in the American Civil War(1861-1865) and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, was able to change America\u2019s political culture to become more democratic, pluralistic and inclusive!!!<\/p>\n Five days after the Civil War ended , President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated . He died on April 15, 1865, and Vice President Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency.<\/p>\n Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) came from the South and wanted the Southern states to be readmitted into the Union of American states, with the least of political obstructions and with the least of reforms to their established socio-economic and socio-political infrastructures. He appointed military governors who would administer the former Confederate states until new civilian governments could be formed with new state constitutions. President Johnson (1865-1869) was a staunch White Supremacist politician who fully reflected the socio-political ideals of most Southerners and many Northerners concerning the societal status of Afro-Americans within White American society.<\/p>\n In his 1868 State of the Union address , President Andrew Johnson declared that, \u2018\u2019\u2026The attempt to place the white population under the domination of persons of color in the South has impaired , if not destroyed , the kindly relations that had previously existed between them; and mutual distrust has engendered a feeling of animosity which leading in some instances to collision and bloodshed , has prevented the cooperation between the two races so essential to the success of industrial enterprise in the southern states\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n This political declaration by President Andrew Johnson may have sounded racist and may have alienated him from many in Congress, especially the Radical Republicans, who wanted to introduce full equality between blacks and whites, and a more pluralistic society, but in its ideological context , it is clear and accurate in presenting the dichotomy between the \u2018\u2019informal social consensus\u2019\u2019 of White Americans towards Afro-Americans and their \u2018\u2019formal political identity\u2019\u2019 as Democratic American Citizens within a Constitutional Democracy . It is what we have described earlier in Part II of our article, when we emphasized the dichotomy which exists between the \u2018\u2019persona\u2019\u2019 and the \u2018\u2019psyche\u2019\u2019 of White Americans towards Afro-Americans.<\/p>\n The Freedman\u2019s Bureau was created by Congress on March 3, 1865, to provide temporary one-year assistance to former slaves and destitute southern whites, victims of the social ravages of the American Civil War in the South. In July of the following year, Congress extended the life span of its administrative functions until 1872, this over President Johnson\u2019s veto in Congress.<\/p>\n The American Congress decided then, that no ex-Confederate land would be given to the freed slaves, nevertheless, the Freedman\u2019s Bureau was invested with the authority to sell to freedmen and destitute Southern whites, all abandoned and confiscated lands at a marginal sell-price , encouraging land ownership among former Afro-American slaves. Throughout the entire time of its administration , the Freedman\u2019s Bureau controlled \u2018\u2019less than two tenths of one percent\u2019\u2019 of all southern lands, most of which President Johnson\u2019s Amnesty Proclamation of May 29, 1865, restored to former slaveholders, while many freedmen were expelled from \u2018\u2019the land that they had paid for\u2019\u2019!!!.<\/p>\n As a consequence of President Johnson\u2019s racist policy against the former Afro-American slaves or freedmen, the Freedman\u2019s Bureau had to change its strategy of land ownership by freedmen, encouraging them to look for work with former slaveholders. Many became tenant farmers, renting land from their former slave masters, who took advantage of their weak socio-economic status and limited political defenses, by exploiting them, almost as slaves, often denying them of their earnings.(https:\/\/www.blackpast.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n The Freedman\u2019s Bureau also provided food and medical care to the former slaves, while also establishing schools for them. By 1870, a quarter million black children and adults attended more than 4,000 of these schools in the South and several black colleges.<\/p>\n Educating the freedmen was the Bureau\u2019s most important legacy, but also through its administrative capacities and prescribed political role , it facilitated the freedmen\u2019s everyday survival.\u2019\u2019\u2026The Freedman\u2019s Bureau also helped the former slaves in the workplace. It tried to make sure that the former slaves received fair wages and freelychose their employers. The bureau created special courts to settle disputes between black workers and their white employers. It could also intervene in other cases that threatened the rights of freedmen\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.crf-usa.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n During the summer and fall of 1865, most of the Confederate states held constitutional conventions to draw up their own constitutions , \u2018\u2019theoretically\u2019\u2019 according to the political directives of Congress, but President Andrew Johnson being a \u2018\u2019white supremacist\u2019\u2019, permitted only white Americans to participate as delegates who would soon frame the new state governments.<\/p>\n During this period of Reconstruction of the South(1865-1877) and the political and legislative procedures by Congress ,ensuring the full Emancipation of Afro-Americans, the general opinion of White southerners then with respect to the \u2018\u2019new social status\u2019\u2019 of Afro-Americans is best summarized by an article written in the \u2018\u2019Daily Telegraph\u2019\u2019, of Macon, Georgia, which states that ,\u2019\u2019\u2026There is such a radical difference in the mental and moral nature of the white and black race, that it would be impossible to secure order in a mixed community by the same law\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.crf-us.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n During the years immediately following the American Civil War(1861-1865), President Andrew Johnson clashed constantly with the Republican controlled Congress, especially with the Radical Republicans, on the Political Reconstruction of the South. President Johnson vetoed legislations such as the establishment of the Freedman\u2019s Bureau in 1865 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866.<\/p>\n The 1866 Civil Rights Act stated that \u2018\u2019all persons born in the United States(except for American Indians) were \u2018\u2019hereby declared to be citizens of the United States\u2019\u2019 and that \u2018\u2019such citizens of every race and color\u2026shall have the same right\u2026as is enjoyed by white citizens\u2019\u2019. Two years later, in 1868, these rights were further secured legally by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which defined the legal parameters of American citizenship and guaranteed all citizens equal protection under the law.(https:\/\/www.thoughtco.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n The first political and legal focus of the 1866 Civil Rights Act was the reversal of the 1857 Supreme Court \u2018\u2019racist ruling\u2019\u2019 in the Dred Scott vs Sandford case, which stated that because of their foreign ancestry, native-born , free Afro-Americans, were not U.S. citizens, and therefore had no right to sue in American courts, which practically meant absolutely \u2018\u2019no legal protection\u2019\u2019 by the American government.<\/p>\n I would like here to provide more details concerning this ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States, to demonstrate clearlythat the Highest Court in the land completely ignored the democratic tenets of the Constitutional Republic, which has been demonstrated \u2018\u2019time and time again\u2019\u2019 through the years , involving the civil rights of Afro-Americans, as well as Native Americans, as we observed in our article on \u2018\u2019Native Americans under American Imperialism\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n Second, by quoting directly some segments of this Supreme Court ruling of March 6, 1857, we could better clarify the Constitutional legal status of Afro-Americans during this period of American history, a position which was defended in a variety of ways by the Supreme Court of the United States, by the American Congress, by state legislatures and state courts, up to the 1950s and the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement by Afro-Americans.<\/p>\n On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Dred Scott, a free Afro-American, who was legally challenging the unfair treatment he was receiving from state courts related to his civil rights as an American . The Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott in a 7 to 2 decision, which was presented in a 200 pages legal document. The opinion of the Court- the \u2018\u2019majority opinion\u2019\u2019, was written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, who once again demonstrated the prevalence of racism and \u2018\u2019white supremacy ideology\u2019\u2019 at the highest levels of American justice.<\/p>\n In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the \u2018\u2019majority opinion\u2019\u2019, Chief Justice Roger Taney states that ,\u2019\u2019\u2026We think \u2026that (black people) are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word \u2018\u2019citizens\u2019\u2019 in the Constitution, and that therefore can claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary , they were at that time (of America\u2019s founding) considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n A second focus of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, was the annulment of the political efforts made by the new state governments and the new legislatures of the southern states, dominated absolutely by White southerners and supported by President Andrew Johnson , who wanted to restore the \u2018\u2019political status quo\u2019\u2019 which existed prior to the American Civil War(1861-1865).<\/p>\n The white southern legislators saw little reason not to continue their political tradition of unequal treatment of Afro-Americans . They imposed severe restrictions on both the former slaves and the emancipated Afro-Americans through artificial legal regulations, where neither of these two groups could vote, serve in juries, travel freely, or work in occupations of their choice; even their marriages were outside the law.(http:\/\/www.crf-usa.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n These racist and restrictive legislative measures by the southern state governments were called \u2018\u2019 black codes\u2019\u2019 and were applied only to Afro-Americans.\u2019\u2019\u2026The defining feature of the post-Civil war Black Codes were vagrancy laws which allowed for the newly freed Black population to be arrested and sentenced to hard labor\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/cung.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n Many in the North, viewed these Black Codes as a way to get around the 13th Amendment and restore slavery in a different legal context. The Union military governors and the Freedman\u2019s Bureau immediately declared the Black Codes invalid.<\/p>\n With the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868,a new Congress hostile to the South took over the control of the Political Reconstruction of the South. This Congress overrode President Johnson\u2019s vetoes in relation to the establishment of the Freedman\u2019s Bureau in 1865 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. These Congressional battles eventually led to the impeachment of President Johnson in 1866 by the House of Representatives, the first impeachment of a president in American history.(http:\/\/www.crf-usa.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n Now under the directives\u00a0\u00a0 of a new \u2018\u2019more progressive\u2019\u2019 American Congress, most southern states held new constitutional conventions during 1867 and 1868, where this time around , the freedman citizens voted and participated. The new \u2018\u2019more democratic\u2019\u2019 state constitutions guaranteed the right of Afro-American adult males to vote and run for public office. We therefore witness for the first time in America\u2019s history, some Afro-Americans in the South being elected in state legislatures and to Congress. By 1868, most states had repealed the remaining racist Black Code laws.(http:\/\/www.crf-usa.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n When Congress withdrew federal troops from the Southern states in 1877,ending the Political Reconstruction of the South, the living conditions of southern Afro-Americans soon deteriorated. Reconstruction had brought positive changes in the lives of Afro-Americans in the South, especially in education and civil rights, but by 1877, the tide of political progress began to reverse due to the country\u2019s changing political climate and the negative economic circumstances in the country.\u2019\u2019\u2026The North had lost interest in helping Southern blacks. Many factors had helped kill Reconstruction: economic trouble in the country, a more conservative consensus within the nation, a general feeling in the country that Reconstruction had failed, the resurgence of the Democratic party, and a growing respectability for racist attitudes\u2026\u2019\u2019. (http:\/\/www.crf-usa.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n Thestates in the South slowly began trying to end the voting rights of their Afro-American citizens by inserting various technical clauses in their own state constitutions which could obstruct Afro-Americans from voting. While the 15th Amendment to the Constitution had legally givenAfro-Americans the right to vote, \u2018\u2019grandfather clauses\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019poll taxes\u2019\u2019 made it almost impossible for them to exercise this right. These laws became popularly known as \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 laws, and remained in force from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until 1965, this, always with the direct or indirect support of the American state through its various legislative and legal institutions. By 1910, all Southern states had excluded to a large extent its Afro-American citizens from voting.(http:\/\/www.crf-usa.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n The term \u2018\u2019 Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 comes from the name of a black character from the mid-nineteenth century American popular theatre or vaudeville theatre , a theatre of minstrels. Crows are big black scavenger birds, and Crow was the last name of a theatre fictional character, who was almost always played by a white minstrel wearing blackface makeup. This minstrel character in the vaudeville shows became so popular , that \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 became an \u2018\u2019abusive name calling\u2019\u2019 by White Americans from the South for people of African descent.<\/p>\n The \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 laws were a series of anti-black laws and racist cultural practices enforced by local and state governments within the American states of the South, in order to maintain a subservient social status and an ineffective political role of Afro-Americans in the South. The term \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 is mostly related to racial segregation, especially in the American South, but we have already mentioned other such laws, such as the \u2018\u2019the poll tax clause\u2019\u2019 and the \u2018\u2019Grandfather clause\u2019\u2019, whose purpose was to obstruct Afro-Americans from voting and participating in the legal political procedures of a Constitutional Democracy. We shall therefore examine these three particular \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 legal initiatives by state governments and their negative effects on the socio-political development and status of Afro-Americans throughout the country.<\/p>\n We shall begin with the \u2018\u2019poll tax\u2019\u2019 voting clause, which required residents to pay this tax to register to vote or provide proof of payment for the tax to vote. Failure to provide a receipt or other proof of payment meant that you could not vote. The political and legal efforts made through the \u2018\u2019poll tax\u2019\u2019 to prevent Afro-Americans from the South from voting were very effective. In the state of Mississippi , fewer than 9,000 of the 147,000 voting-age Afro-Americans were registered to vote after 1890, while in Louisiana where more than 130,000 black voters had been registered in 1896, the number went down to 1,342 in 1904.<\/p>\n By 1962, just five states had poll taxes , Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. That same year, Congress passed the 24th Amendment, outlawing the \u2018\u2019poll-tax\u2019\u2019 as a voting requirement in federal elections by a vote of 295 to 86. This Amendment did not become part of the American Constitution until 1964, when South Dakota ratified it.(https:\/\/www.forbes.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n To demonstrate how effective the \u2018\u2019poll tax\u2019\u2019 clause was in disenfranchising Afro-Americans, we shall provide the following commentary made by Martin Luther King Jr. in his autobiography related to the voting participation by Afro-Americans in the state of Mississippi during 1963. He states that ,\u2019\u2019\u2026The church burnings, harassment, and murders in this state(Mississippi) were direct results of the fact that Negro citizens could not vote and participate in electing responsible public officials who would protect the rights of all people. Many thousands had tried to register, in spite of violence , economic reprisals, and other forms of intimidation- yet in 1963, only 1,636 Negro persons were registered in the entire state\u2026\u2019\u2019. (p.250- The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., Edited by Clayborne Carson, Warner Books, 1998)<\/p>\n The \u2018\u2019Grandfather clause\u2019\u2019 , was a statutory or constitutional legal device passed by seven Southern states between 1895 and 1910, to deny suffrage to Afro-Americans. It states that \u2018\u2019\u2026those Americans(all Americans) who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867,as well as their lineal descendants , would be exempt from recently enacted educational , property, or tax requirements for voting\u2026\u2019\u2019. The fact that the former slaves had not been granted the right to vote until the passing of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 1870, these Afro-Americans were effectively excluded from voting, while at the same time, it assured the franchise to many poor and illiterate White Americans.<\/p>\n Even though the American Supreme Court declared in 1915 that the \u2018\u2019Grandfather clause\u2019\u2019 was unconstitutional because it ignored the \u2018\u2019equal voting rights\u2019\u2019 of Afro-Americans, guaranteed by the 15th Amendment of the American Constitution of 1870, it was not until 50 years later, as well as almost 100 years after the 15th Amendment, when President Lyndon B. Johnson(1963-1969) introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that the American Congress was able to eliminate the discriminatory and racist legal and political interventions of the \u2018\u2019Grandfather clause\u2019\u2019. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolished any type of voter prerequisites in order to vote, while it also enforced federal supervision of voter registration. With the passing of the Voting Rights Act by Congress in 1965, the 15th Amendment which permitted all Afro-American citizens the political right to vote, was finally enforceable in its totality throughout the United States.(https:\/\/www.britannica.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n As we have already mentioned, during the Political Reconstruction of the South(1865-1877), political steps were taken by the American Congress to legally protect and promote the civil rights of Afro-Americans, especially those of the new freedmen. The Civil Rights Act of 1866, was an effective and powerful political response to the \u2018\u2019racist\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019discriminatory\u2019\u2019 legislations passed by the state governments of the South in 1865 and in 1866, undermining the social, political and economic status of their Afro-American citizens. These legislations were called \u2018\u2019Black Codes\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n After 1866, Congress passed three more Civil Rights Acts, in 1870 and in 1871, which were intended to further protect the civil right of Afro-Americans to vote ,to hold political office, to be on juries, and to have government protection under the law.<\/p>\n The first Civil Rights Act in 1870, banned the use of terror, force or bribery to prevent citizens from voting, because of their particular race. It granted equal opportunity for every citizen to vote irrespective of race, while it also assigned the legal power to the President to use the army in order to enforce this Act.<\/p>\n The second Civil Rights Act of 1871, provided federal supervision of local and state elections.<\/p>\n The third Civil Rights Act of 1871, became known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which made state officials liable in federal courts for depriving anyone of their civil rights or of equal protection under the law. This Act also went against the violence directed by \u2018\u2019white supremacist groups\u2019\u2019 of the South against the nearly freed populations of Afro-Americans. President Ulysses S. Grant(1869-1877) used the legal authority granted to him by this Act to dismantle the KKK, a paramilitary organization of White Supremacists, whose political agenda was the political subjugation and the social dismantling of Afro-Americans everywhere in the country, but especially in the South.<\/p>\n After the end of the Political Reconstruction of the South in 1877,racial segregation laws were enacted by the legislatures of the American states in the South, eventually becoming the most powerful and the most effective of the \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 laws, especially in the South. Segregation \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 laws remained active from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until 1965, when the Black Civil Rights Movement finally had an important impact on the policies of the American Central Government related to the social and economic plight of Afro-Americans throughout the United States.\u2019\u2019\u2026The laws mandated racial segregation as policy in all public facilities in the southern states. The facilities were supposed to be \u2018\u2019separate but equal\u2019\u2019, but in effect were inferior, creating a situation of economic and social disadvantage. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson extended segregation to the military and to federal workplaces\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/cung.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n The one legislation which attacked \u2018\u2019racial segregation\u2019\u2019 on a broad front was the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This Act made it a crime for an individual to deny Afro-Americans accommodations or services because of race or color.\u2019\u2019\u2026The \u2018full and equal enjoyment\u2019 of any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters and other places of public amusement\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.ourdocuments.gov<\/a>)<\/p>\n This wide range of anti-discriminatory legislation which combatted the \u2018\u2019societal segregation\u2019\u2019 of Afro-Americans was once again made void by the Highest Court of the Land, when in 1883, the American Supreme Court annulled its legal status, ruling that the 14th Amendment did not give Congress the authority to combat or prevent racial discrimination by private individuals. But there was a \u2018\u2019dirty legal catch\u2019\u2019 to their decision as it related to the legal protection of the victims of racial discrimination.<\/p>\n The \u2018\u2019underhanded formula\u2019\u2019 of the Supreme Court\u2019s decision towards the victims of discrimination was that these victims were instructed to seek justice not from the Federal Government, but from state governments. It was widely then known that the governments of the states had began a \u2018\u2019one track\u2019\u2019 legislative course of passing laws and constitutional acts, which legalized and institutionalized the \u2018\u2019social inequalities\u2019\u2019 between the races. They began with the legislations requiring the establishment of separate schools for children of each race, soon extending \u2018\u2019racial segregation\u2019\u2019 to include most public and semi-public facilities.(https:\/\/www.ourdocuments.gov<\/a>)<\/p>\n The Supreme Court ruling of 1883, had in a way neutralized the impact of the \u2018\u2019Equal Protection Clause\u2019\u2019 of the 14th Amendment , which meant that \u2018\u2019segregation by race\u2019\u2019 in the private sector and in a way \u2018\u2019racial discrimination\u2019\u2019 by individuals had formally and legally been approved by the Highest Court of the country. This Supreme Court decision was one of several which provided for the legal basis in the efforts of state legislatures to bring back the \u2018\u2019social status\u2019\u2019 of pre-Civil War days. We therefore witness \u2018\u2019whites only\u2019\u2019 signs starting to appearacrossthe South, but also in the North of the country.(https:\/\/www.infoplease.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n Beginning with the passage of an 1887 Florida law, states now required that railway companies provide separate accommodations for each race. When a similar bill was proposed before the Louisiana legislature in 1890, the Afro-American citizens of New Orleans , in a vigorous and legally organized campaign opposed it, and despite the presence of 16 Afro-American legislators in the state assembly , the law was passed.\u2019\u2019\u2026Passengers were required to sit in the appropriate areas or face a 25 dollar fine (a large amount at that time)or a 20 day jail sentence. Black nurses attending white children were permitted to ride in white compartments, however\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.ourdocuments.gov<\/a>)<\/p>\n Homer Plessy, a young shoemaker who was one eighth black and seven-eighths white, boarded a Louisiana state rail car on June 7, 1892. Supported by two Afro-American interest groups fighting against \u2018\u2019racial discrimination\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019racial segregation\u2019\u2019 , the Citizens Committee(Comit\u00e9 des Citoyens)\u00a0\u00a0 and the black newspaper \u2018\u2019The Crusader\u2019\u2019 , Plessy purposefully sat down in the \u2018\u2019White Only\u2019\u2019 rail car, and refused to move when asked by the railroad employees to do so. Plessy refusing to pay the fine, was jailed immediately.<\/p>\n Homer Plessy with his Afro-American support groups, took the case to the local circuit court, presided over by judge John Howard Ferguson. Homer Plessy argued in the court that his civil rights under the Reconstruction Amendments 13, 14 and 15, were violated when he was arrested for riding in a \u2018\u2019white only\u2019\u2019 railway car. Homer Plessy then went to the Louisiana Supreme Court with little success. He finally ended at the Supreme Court of the United States to plead his case.<\/p>\n On May 18,1896, the Supreme Court voted in favor of Judge Ferguson and the state of Louisiana and against Homer Plessy. The Court decided that Louisiana\u2019s segregation law did not violate the 14th Amendment \u2018\u2019so long as the separate accommodations were equal\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n The following section of the summary of the \u2018\u2019majority ruling\u2019\u2019 of the Supreme Court , clearly demonstrates the \u2018\u2019cynicism\u2019\u2019 and the \u2018\u2019hypocrisy\u2019\u2019 which dominated the feelings and the minds of the justices of the Supreme Court towards Afro-Americans, an attitude shared by most White Americans in the South, and many in the North.<\/p>\n \u0399n this summary , Chief Justice Henry Brown expresses the following political position by noting that, \u2019\u2019\u2026We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff\u2019s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so , it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it\u2026If the civil and political rights of both races be equal , one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.ourdocuments.gov<\/a>)<\/p>\n This decision by the Supreme Court in 1896, involving the Plessy vs Ferguson case , a ruling in favor of separate areas for Afro-Americans and White Americans \u2018\u2019as long as they were equal\u2019\u2019 , was legally applied for more than 60 years, until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1954, in the case Brown vs the Board of Education.<\/p>\n In the case of Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated facilities were \u2018\u2019inherently unequal\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n The Plessy vs Ferguson Supreme Court decision made \u2018\u2019racial segregation\u2019\u2019 legal throughout the United States, although it was applied more forcefully in the South. Nevertheless, some segregationist practices , especially in housing and in the labor market were also very prevalent in the North. Throughout the 1960s, thanks to the political work of the Afro-American Civil Rights Movement and a more democratic and pluralistic social environment , the \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 laws or regulations were dismantled through legislation at all levels, making it illegal to segregate public facilities, suppress voting, discriminate in housing, or prohibit interracial marriages\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.khanacademy.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n The Supreme Court\u2019s decision in the Plessy vs Ferguson case in 1896, demonstrates how the Justice System in the United States complemented and also reinforced the general political and social consensus of White America in undermining and in underestimating the social status of Afro-Americans, to the detriment of the democratic tenets of America\u2019s Constitution and its political culture.\u2019\u2019\u2026The ruling resulted in a major setback in the struggle for equality between the races in the United States and set the stage for racial segregation within the South until the overruling in 1954. 1896 needs to be a constant reminder to the people of our country of the horrible damages done to society when the highest court of law in the land rules against justice and equality\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.ferris.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n Within the historical framework of the Political Reconstruction of the South and the \u2018\u2019Jim Crow\u2019\u2019 laws of the Southern States, there were two societal components or societal institutions which greatly marked the political culture of the country in the late 19th and early 20th century , especially in the South, while they were both interrelated socio-politically.<\/p>\n The first one was the creation in the 1860s, of a paramilitary political organization in the South by the name of Ku Klux Klan. The second social component was the illegal societal institution of \u2018\u2019lynching\u2019\u2019 as a justice process which was essentially \u2018\u2019mob justice\u2019\u2019 , beyond the institutionalized legal tools like courts, juries and lawyers or legal representation.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2019Lynching\u2019\u2019 as a procedure of justice, resulted in the killing executions of Afro-Americans who were \u2018\u2019theoretically\u2019\u2019 found guilty by \u2018\u2019local groups\u2019\u2019 of people of various serious crimes, such as murder, theft, rape and bootlegging . There were also \u2018\u2019mob executions\u2019\u2019 of White Americans who were stigmatized as national traitors because they had cooperated with Afro-Americans and had defended their civil rights. Both of these hybrid and unconstitutional societal institutions were socially active and effective for the benefit of White American interests, but to the detriment of the civil rights and the everyday welfare of Afro-Americans, especially in the South.<\/p>\n With the Political Reconstruction of the South through the specific Reconstruction Constitutional Amendments and various Civil Rights Acts during the 1860s and 1870s, Afro-Americans were freed from the social burden of living as a \u2018\u2019subjugated peoples\u2019\u2019 , while also achieving their civil and voting rights. As a societal reaction to these dramatic democratic reforms , especially in the South, most White Americans who were historically attached to an ideology of White Racial Superiority , tried to counter these progressive political developments both legally and individually.<\/p>\n Legally and constitutionally they tried to define the legislations coming out from the Southern state legislatures dominated by White Supremacist legislators , but also individually or in groups, who would execute social policies outside the legal federal and state governmental framework. One of these para-state and illegal political organizations , supporting a White Supremacy ideology in all aspects of everyday American life was the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK.<\/p>\n The KKK was originally organized in the winter of 1865-1866 in the Southern state of Tennessee , a former Confederate state, by six Confederate veterans. In the beginning,the KKK was a secret fraternity club of former Confederate veterans, but soon it became a\u2018\u2019terrorist organization\u2019\u2019 with a political agenda. Their White Supremacist political goals were to subdue and terrorize the Afro-American population of the South, so that these \u2018\u2019freedmen\u2019\u2019 would not succeed in affirming and reinforcing their economic, social and political position within White American Society.<\/p>\n Slowly, the KKK attracted former Civil War Confederate generals and spread beyond the state of Tennessee to every state in the South, and as members it included mayors, judges and sheriffs, as well as common White Supremacist criminals. The Klan in a systematic way murdered Afro-American politicians and white political leaders who supported the civil rights of Afro-Americans, while also intimidating tens of thousands of freedmen from voting as American citizens. The goals of the KKK were political but their methods were terror, terror against all Afro-Americans, which meant that they could be murdered by an \u2018\u2019organized mob\u2019\u2019 for almost any reason, and against White Americans who believed in social justice and in democracy.(https:\/\/www.thirteen.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n The historian Elaine Frantz Parson in her book \u2018\u2019Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction\u2019\u2019 , writes that ,\u2019\u2019\u2026From 1866 through 1871, men calling themselves \u2018Ku-Klux\u2019 , killed hundreds of black Southerners and their white supporters, sexually molested hundreds of black women and men, drove thousands of black families from their homes and thousands of black men and women from their employment, and appropriated land, crops, guns, livestock, and food from black Southerners on a massive scale\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/daily.jstor.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n The Civil\u00a0\u00a0 Rights Act of 1871, which is also called the Ku Klux Klan Act, allowed President Ulysses S. Grant(1869-1877), a former general of the Union Army, to dismantle the KKK which did not appear again until the beginning of the 20th century. This bill authorized the President to intervene in the former rebel states that attempted to deny \u2018\u2019any person or any class of persons of the equal privileges or immunities under the law.\u2019\u2019 The President could use the U.S. military , or use \u2018\u2019other means, as he may deem necessary\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/history.house.gov<\/a>)<\/p>\n The KKK resurfaced in the beginning of the 20th century, when the United States experienced an increase in anti-immigrant sentiment and a negative reaction to the great migration of Afro-Americans from the South towards the North, searching for work in its large urban centers. But what reinforced this racist narrative was the release of the movie \u2018\u2019The Birth of a Nation\u2019\u2019 by film director and producer D. W. Griffith (1875-1948), in February 1915. The movie was a racist 3 hour epic film about the American Civil War and Reconstruction, projecting the Ku Klux Klan as the \u2018\u2019brave saviors\u2019\u2019 of the South torn apart by \u2018\u2019crooked businessmen\u2019\u2019 from the North and also by \u2018\u2019immoral\u2019\u2019 Afro-American freedmen in the South.<\/p>\n Griffith is considered as one of the greatest film directors of all time, whose father had been a Confederate Army colonel from the state of Kentucky. His movie ,as a popular form of entertainment, broke box-office records throughout the country. This movie seen by millions of Americans, depicted Afro-Americans in a very negative way , while at the same time, it glorified the Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n The movie \u2018\u2019The Birth of a Nation\u2019\u2019 was a great popular success not only because it was well directed and technically innovative, but also because it told a \u2018\u2019quasi-historical\u2019\u2019 narrative whose racist theme was close to the hearts and minds of many White Americans, especially in the South. Film studies professor Paul McEwen explains this aspect simply when he comments that, \u2018\u2019\u2026People were primed for the message\u2026hard to argue this was a distortion of history, when the history books at that time said the same\u2026\u2019\u2019. (https:\/\/www.history.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n Partly because of the migration of\u00a0\u00a0 Southern Afro-Americans to the large cities of the North during and just after WWI, the KKK expanded to all the Northern states. Membership soared in Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago, while mayoral candidates endorsed by the KKK won in major Northern cities like Indianapolis , Denver and Atlanta.(https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n The first wave of the KKK in the late 19th century was primarily a political phenomenon of the South, whose members were mostly lower-class White American laborers , while the second wave of the KKK early in the 20th century, had a national impact throughout the country and was composed mostly of middle-class White Americans. The first Klan organization\u00a0\u00a0 focused their attacks mainly on Afro-American freedman from the South, while the second in the 20th century, fought also against Catholics, Jews, intellectuals, and anyone who they thought undermined the purity and unity of traditional American culture. The majority of the members of the modern KKK were urban, middle-class , Protestant White Americans.(https:\/\/daily.jstor.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n In the 1920s, even though a portion of its members had murdered or physically abused those they considered un-American, the majority of the KKK functioned as a \u2018\u2019great fraternal lodge\u2019\u2019 and a \u2018\u2019nationwide political power\u2019\u2019. This organization encouraged its top members to become political candidates for political offices in all levels of government, in order to accomplish its nationalist racist political aims. In essence, the KKK was a national political movement of\u00a0\u00a0 White Americans who still considered Afro-Americans as inferior.<\/p>\n At the height of its political power and social influence in the 1920s, the membership had reached from 3 to 6 million people. By 1930, the KKK had about 30,000 permanent members, yet in national and state politics , their political and social clout remained and still remains, \u2018\u2019in other guises\u2019\u2019,significant.\u2019\u2019\u2026According to a 1976 report by the Illinois Legislative Investigating Commission , \u2018governors in 10 states and 13 senators in nine states were elected with Klan help. At least one senator, Hugo Black, who was destined to become a United States Supreme Court Justice, had been a Klansman\u2019\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/daily.jstor.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n Hugo Black(1886-1967) was known as a defender of civil rights during his three decades on the Supreme Court. Hugo Black was born in 1886, and was a lawyer and politician from the southern state of Alabama. He was appointed to the Supreme Court Of the United States in 1937, but shortly after, a reporter exposed his past affiliation with the White Supremacist organization of the Ku Klux Klan.(https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n Let us now observe the historical and cultural significance of \u2018\u2019lynching\u2019\u2019 a social institution related to a form of societal justice executed by a group of people or \u2018\u2019a mob\u2019\u2019 and not by the various state institutions of justice and social order such as the courts, the state legislatures and the police apparatus. First of all, we have to specify that relevant historical research has demonstrated that \u2018\u2019lynching\u2019\u2019 is a criminal practice which is peculiar to the United States.(http:\/\/teachersinstitute.yale.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n If we now define the term \u2018\u2019lynching\u2019\u2019 as \u2018\u2019\u2026the killing (by hanging, burning, or torturing) of an individual or individuals, by a group of three or more persons operating outside the legal system in the belief that they have the right to serve justice or to reinforce a tradition or social custom\u2026\u2019\u2019(https:\/\/www.okhistory.org<\/a>), then we could conclude that the American political culture lacks a viable or a stable component of criminal justice as a Constitutional Democracy. We could go even further and say that the fact that \u2018\u2019lynching\u2019\u2019 could function in American society for more than 100 years(from the 1880s to the 1950s) , there must have been tacit approval by the law enforcement state infrastructure.<\/p>\n Essentially, \u2018\u2019lynching\u2019\u2019 or \u2018\u2019mob justice\u2019\u2019 was an illegal means of social control of Afro-Americans in the Southern and border states. It represented an \u2018\u2019informal\u2019\u2019 popular justice system by\u00a0\u00a0 White Americans to terrorize Afro-Americans in order to maintain White Political Supremacy. Yet lynching was not exclusively associated with racism and the White hatred and fear of the Negro American, it was also directed against White American criminals, especially in the western states of the country, such as livestock rustlers, stagecoach robbers, gamblers and bootleggers , since in these states far from the center of American governance, there was a shortage of courts and law enforcement officials.(https:\/\/www.okhistory.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n According to the Tuskegee Historical Institute records , between 1882 and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States, 3,437 Negroes and 1,293 whites. The largest number of lynching occurred in 1892, with 230 persons lynched , 161 Afro-Americans and 69 White Americans.(http:\/\/teachersinstitute.yale.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n Lynching occurred throughout the United States, however the great majority cases of lynching in the country took place in the Southern and border states. Various ethnic groups were victims of lynching , including Mexicans, Chinese, Native Indians and Europeans. Nevertheless ,from the late 19th century and after , Afro-Americans were the prime targets of lynching , as White Americans, especially in the South, wanted to maintain racial control following the end of the American Civil War.(https:\/\/www.dictionary.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n We have already examined how the KKK as a paramilitary political organization had waged war against former Afro-American slaves in the South in order to obstruct their economic, social and political progress , after they had achieved full political emancipation through the various Constitutional Amendments and Civil Rights Acts between 1865 and 1875. One of the methods of their terrorist attackswas \u2018\u2019lynching\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n In 1871, the Afro-American citizens of Frankfort, Kentucky, sent a petition to Congress , to demand government protection from the terror being inflicted on them by the various White Supremacist organizations such as the KKK. In their petition to the American Congress they emphasized the fact that, \u2018\u2019\u2026organized bands of desperate and lawless men, mainly composed of soldiers of the late Rebel armies, armed, disciplined, and disguised , and bound by oath and secret obligations, have by force, terror, and violence subverted all civil society among the colored people\u2026.We believe you are not familiar with the Ku Klux Klan\u2019s riding mighty over the country, going from county to county, and in the county towns spreading terror wherever they go by robbing, whipping, ravishing, and killing our people without provocation\u2026.We would state that we have been law-abiding citizens, pay our tax, and, in many parts of the state, our people have been driven from the polls – refused the right to vote. Many have been slaughtered while attempting to vote; we ask how long is this state of things to last\u2026\u2019\u2019.(pp.173-174, Freedom, a history of U.S., Hakim, Joy, Oxford University Press,2003)<\/p>\n Although many White Americans from the South rejected violence against Afro-Americans, White Supremacists in state positions of power, such as governors , prosecutors, mayors and police chiefs were determined to preserve \u2018\u2019racial segregation\u2019\u2019 and the social status of \u2018\u2019second class citizens\u2019\u2019 for Afro-Americans. In many areas of the South, the members of the KKK were active and willing to use terror, violence and even murder to maintain the separation of the races.<\/p>\n Many of those carrying out the violence and the lynching were never brought to justice or they were arrested and tried decades later. Lynching was essentially a local community affair, most commonly in the smaller towns in isolated rural communities of the South, where people were poor, mostly illiterate, and where there was a lack of organized community recreation. The people who composed \u2018\u2019the mobs\u2019\u2019 in such communities were small land holders, tenant farmers and common laborers, whose economic status was very similar to that of their Afro-American neighbors.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, it seems that the whole state apparatus of these communities was willing to insure the continuation of this illegal justice system, since it was an effective form of \u2018\u2019popular entertainment\u2019\u2019 and a \u2018\u2019social control\u2019\u2019 of\u00a0\u00a0 Afro-Americans as a \u2018\u2019subservient race\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/teachersinstitute.yale.edu<\/a>). The Ku Klux Klan was promoting race in these rural towns and from 1882 until 1960, a total of 4,700 Afro-Americans had been lynched.(https:\/\/www.ferris.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n In completing this article, I would like to provide two historical facts which I believe are relevant to the substance of our theme.<\/p>\n The first one comes from the autobiography of Malcolm X, where he describes his early life when he was growing up in a rural village in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was a Baptist minister and a political follower of Marcus Garvey and his political philosophy of \u2018\u2019back to Africa\u2019\u2019. Marcus Garvey(1887-1940) was a black nationalist from Jamaica, who created a political movement in the United States early in the 20th century. He promoted the full emancipation of Afro-Americans and their eventual return to Africa. The father of Malcolm X was killed by \u2018\u2019lynching\u2019\u2019 in 1925.<\/p>\n Related to his father\u2019s murder by lynching , Malcolm X explains that ,\u2019\u2019\u2026Among the reasons my father had decided to risk and dedicate his life to help disseminate this philosophy(Garvey\u2019s) among his people was that he had seen four of his six brothers die by violence, three of them killed by white men, including one by lynching. What my father could not know then was that of the remaining three, including himself, only one, my Uncle Jim, would die in bed, of natural causes\u2026\u2019\u2019.(p.2 — The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ballantine Books, New York 1992)<\/p>\n
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