Reconstruction is generally recognized as ending in 1877, with the Great Betrayal. But when did the era that followed it, Redemption, end? An acquaintance and I disagree about this. He claims it was all over but the shouting by 1940.(He also insists that lynchings had all but died out by 1900.::dubious:s. I don’t thinkRedemption ended until sometime after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I can’t find any references to the end of Redemption in the research I’ve done. And I need citations in order to convince my acquaintance.
Also, I’m not comfortable using the term “Redemption,” as it has positive connotations for what was a very bloody and dark era. I’ve used “Post-Reconstruction,” but that seems excessively vague. Any suggestions?
I have heard people refer to that period as the Jim Crow Era or simply Jim Crow. When using that name, it makes sense for the period to extend all the way to 1965.
“Redemption” (best put in quotes to indicate that one doesn’t endorse the self-identification of the white paramilitaries as “redeemers”) is usually applied to the process by which white Democrats regained control of the Southern states after 1868. Thus, redemption ended when Reconstruction ended–in all states, by 1877.
The era which followed, usually called post-Reconstruction, ran through about 1900 (but ended earlier in some states). During post-Reconstruction, significant numbers of black people continued to vote and even hold office in some areas, and segregation was far from complete. Democrats governed (often by fraud) in most states for most of the period, but there was some inter-party competition involving Greenbackers, Populists, and Republicans.
During the 1890’s, most Southern states held constitutional conventions to enact more thorough and systematic disenfranchisement. At the same time, legislatures enacted the first de jure segregation laws, which were upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson. This marks the transition to the Jim Crow Era, during which political competition was restricted virtually 100% to white Democrats.
Thanks. Since the first Jim Crow laws were enacted in 1876, how could* Plessy*, which was handed down in 1896 and affirmed the supposed Constitutionality of Jim Crow laws, have ushered in the Jim Crow Era?
I’d prefer to use “Jim Crow era,” but in thinking about it, I realize that the so-called Redemption term encompasses not just segregation, but also the South’s increased political autonomy and influence, while “Jim Crow” refers only to de jure and de facto segregation and the attendant violence and discrimination. Surely there’s a term historians use that’s not as loaded as “Redemption,” and there must be an agreement as to when this era ended.
Most of the lynching occurred before 1900, it’s true, but a considerable proportion happened afterwards. And note that the horizontal divisions are in hundreds. We’re talking about thousands of lynchings taking place in the 20th century.
You can find isolated instances of segregation laws as early as 1876, or probably even earlier if you canvassed every law in all 11 Southern states. But the earliest laws were very patchwork and uneven in enforcement.
As late as 1885, black journalist McCants Stewart travelled from Washington DC to South Carolina to test the status of service for black people, and filed uniformly optimistic reports. He rode in integrated first class cars, ate in the dining car, attended the theater, and reported that he was “more politely waited upon than in some parts of New England”.
It wasn’t until 1888 that Mississippi enacted the first state law requiring segregation in all railroad cars, not just first class cars. The law was challenged in federal court by a railroad (not by passengers), but the railroad lost.
Louisiana then enacted its own RR segregation law in 1890, and added criminal penalties for passengers who fail to comply. This was the law challenged and upheld by an arrested passenger in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Roughly between 1888 and 1902 every Southern state enacted thoroughgoing laws concerning segregation in public transportation, and either held a constitutional convention or passed laws enacting thoroughgoing disenfranchisement of African Americans (couched in non-racial terms, of course, to avoid violating the Fifteenth Amendment). This is why the 1890’s (with 1896 as a symbolic turning point) mark a transition to a Jim Crow Era from the earlier post-Reconstruction era, in which white Democrats usually held power but segregation and disenfracnhisement were less pervasive.
And again, I’ve often seem white Democrats described (usually in quotes in modern literature) as “redeemers”, and the process by which they regained control of the South in the 1870’s as “redemption”, but I’ve not seen the term applied to the later era in which the redeemers were in power.