The period between the Brown v. Board of Education case and the end of the 1960s has been called the Second Reconstruction. Some people claim a Third Reconstruction, starting with Obama’s election in 2009 and teetering towards its end nowadays.
If so, it is being aided and abetted-like the First Reconstruction-by the United States Supreme Court.
The First Reconstruction started right after the Civil War and ended in 1877. During this period, there was a movement toward a multi-racial democracy. Notably, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were passed.
African Americans were involved at all levels of government in the South. Sixteen served in the U.S. Congress, more than 600 were elected to state legislatures, and hundreds more held local offices across the South.
In various states, these multi-racial state governments enfranchised poor whites, abolished property qualifications for jury service, abolished property qualifications for voting, and created state public school systems.
During this period, the Civil Rights Act of 1975 was passed. Martin Luther King often said this Act was more robust than the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The First Reconstruction ended with the Hayes-Tilden Compromise in 1877, an informal agreement that resolved the disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. The Democrats agreed to accept Hayes as the President if he would remove the federal troops from the South. The troops had protected African Americans from the Ku Klux Klan and other racial terrorists. Their removal enhanced a reign of terror against blacks.
The period of Southern Redemption, roughly between 1877, the end of Reconstruction, and 1900, the beginning of the new century, saw the South, with plenty of help from the North, regaining its footing and its ability to manage its affairs, which often meant exploiting their former slaves.
Then, the U.S. Supreme Court chipped in-in a major way. First were the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), which limited the 14th Amendment. Then came the overturning of the 1866 and 1875 Civil Rights laws (1883), and the knockout punch was the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896, which installed segregation as constitutionally legal and ushered in 58 years of segregation.
Relying on the constitutional foundation supplied by the U.S. Supreme Court, these states began instituting the era of Jim Crow. The Court provided the ex-Confederate states with the constitutional backing they needed to construct a completely segregated society.
The Second Reconstruction brought about the Brown v. Board ruling, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The Voting Rights Act was considered the most important, as it ushered in an era of increased political participation by African Americans.
Of course, things stopped after Martin Luther King’s assassination. That is why some people consider the Third Revolution as starting with Obama’s election. The immediate appearance of the Tea Party foreshadowed the oncoming racial backlash.
Then, the Supreme Court played its usual role-holding back the tide of racial progress.
The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Shelby v Holder, gutted the Voting Rights Act. With permission granted by this decision, States began to make it harder for African Americans and other minorities to vote-closing thousands of polling places in African American communities, purging voter rolls, and enacting strict voter ID laws.
While the Supreme Court was busy propping up Donald Trump, they continued their attack on civil rights. Last year, the Supreme Court decimated affirmative action in colleges and universities. Last June, the Court overturned the Chevron Rule.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights issued a statement saying, “Communities across the country depend on federal agencies to interpret and enforce civil rights laws and protections effectively, and today’s ruling gravely hinders their ability to do so. This devastating decision could have drastic implications for the government’s ability to deliver on civil rights for the American people and for our democracy.”
However, the U.S. Supreme Court is reverting to its traditional anti-civil rights stance.
