Over say, a five-year period? There were plenty of bad times and places, but which arugably was the worst?
I’d say the late 1870s. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, there were people who were genuinely trying to help the freed slaves in gaining economic and political security. There was still a lot of resentment towards the former Confederates so little attention was given to white complaints. But as the years went by, public attention moved on to other issues. Southern whites made deals with the national government to take back political control of their states. And once they had control they used it to crush the Southern blacks. Black Americans were hurt more by having what they had gained taken away from them then they were hurt by the subsequent decades when they essentially had nothing left to lose.
Yes - don’t forget, the height of the KKK was right after the civil war. It was enough of a threat that they had to pass the Klan Act specifically to crack down on it.
Yes, the Klan was at its worst in the late 1860s and was mostly (albeit temporarily) broken ten years later. But black Americans between 1865 and 1870 could at least feel that while they were struggling, they were achieving something and their situation was improving. In the “Redemption” period of the 1870s, their struggle was just to try to hold on to what they had and was unsuccessful.
Being black and involved in the Civil Rights movement was no picnic, still I gotta go with 1870’s it was more likely worse just undocumented.
Of course, it also depends on where the black person was living. Blacks in the North had a great deal of economic and political freedom in the North from the end of the Civil War up to the early parts of the twentieth century. They lived in integrated neighborhoods, worked in integrated professions, and in general were treated quite well.
Wilson administration. A huge setback to all that had been achieved since the Civil War.
I picked this up the Lies My Teacher Taught Me book, which while raving lefty has some interesting material for those who have only had a cursory review of US history.
Tulsa, Okla. was certainly no fun for blacks in the 1910s and 1920s: Tulsa race massacre - Wikipedia
Many historians consider the years between 1890 and World War I to have been the nadir of the postwar black experience. The collapse of Reconstruction in the 1870’s left blacks without significant political power in any Southern state, but still with some rights and with relatively integrated public facilities. As late as 1884, an African American chaired the Republican National Convention, and there were Southern black members of Congress until 1901.
These vestiges of Reconstruction wore away during the 1890’s. Every Southern state enacted comprehensive, systematic disenfrachisement of black voters (via “literacy tests” and the white primary), and every state enacted “Jim Crow” laws requiring, at first, segregated railroad cars, and later segregation in virtually all public facilities. Lynching also reached its peak during the 1890’s and early 1900’s.
Beginning with World War I, there was some recovery–war brought economic opportunity and migration to Northern cities, and lynching declined, partly because Southern whites feared that continuing the practice would provoke federal intervention.
Another tangent: the New Orleans city museum includes the actual courtroom where Plessy v. Ferguson was tried. I visited it in early 2001. Lotta history there.
And the new KKK was formed in 1915 (inspired at least in part by the release of Birth of a Nation.)