Sliding back to racial tyranny

When U.S. Rep. James Clyburn warned that America risks sliding backward toward the post-Reconstruction era, many heard the words but failed to grasp the horror behind them.

They should.

The soft-spoken South Carolina congressman is not given to exaggeration. When Clyburn invokes the specter of post-Reconstruction America, he is not quoting a distant chapter in a textbook. He is warning of a period so brutal, so morally disfiguring, that its scars remain visible in the American landscape more than a century later.

His warning came after he narrowly survived a congressional redistricting battle that threatened to erase the district he represents. Had it succeeded, many Black South Carolinians would have seen their political influence diminished in a state where Black voters have long fought for fair representation.

Clyburn’s warning reminds us of the tyranny that followed slavery’s end.

After the Civil War, America entered Reconstruction, which lasted from 1865 to 1877. Nearly four million formerly enslaved people were recognized as citizens rather than property.

The passage of the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 14th granted citizenship and the 15th protected the voting rights of Black men. Women would not gain the right to vote until 1920.

Black Americans voted. They organized. They built businesses, churches, schools and communities. More than 1,500 African Americans held public office. Twenty served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Two served in the U.S. Senate.

Then came the backlash.

The U.S. Supreme Court aided and abetted a rising anti-Black campaign to suppress Black political advancement. In 1896, the high court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision legalized racial segregation.

Without the protection of the legal system, the KKK and white vigilantes conducted a reign of terror. In fact, more than 6,500 Blacks were lynched, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, from 1830 to 1950. It was not unusual for pastors to pause church services for their congregants to watch lynchings of Black people and return to church observances as if nothing inhumane had happened.

Courts weakened civil rights protections. States erected barriers to voting. Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and intimidation campaigns transformed constitutional rights into empty promises.

Legal segregation meant Blacks were forced to suffer the indignity of Jim Crow laws. They were barred from many public accommodations and denied equal access to schools, housing and employment. Schools, parks, movie theaters and hotels were segregated. Even in death, Black Americans were often buried in segregated cemeteries.

Today, similar circumstances that disenfranchised Black people are arising. The Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings that critics argue have weakened protections for Black voters.

In addition, President Trump has instituted one of the most anti-Black campaigns that suggests the return of the post-Reconstruction period. This includes firing Black administrative and military leaders, dismantling civil rights protections, gutting federal jobs that helped build the Black middle class and canceling diversity programs that aided Black colleges. In fact, 300,000 jobs held by Black women were terminated last year.

In the wake of falling election poll numbers, Trump officials are ordering GOP leaders in Southern states to gerrymander voter districts to curtail Black voters who are key to the Democratic base. Missouri is included.

That is why Clyburn’s warning deserves attention.

He recounts in his book, “The First Eight,” how eight Black men from South Carolina were elected to Congress during the post-Reconstruction era. Yet within a decade, a combination of violence, voter suppression and legal barriers drove them from office. It would take nearly a century before another Black South Carolinian — Clyburn himself — would be elected to Congress in 1992.

As the doors of democracy begin to close again, we must remember: What is taken from one group is taken from us all.

If America returns to the spirit of Jim Crow, the greatest loss will not be Black political representation alone. It will be the moral core of the nation itself.

And as Clyburn warns, some damage would take generations to undo.

Barbara Reynolds is a former columnist and editorial board member for USA Today, where she served from 1982 to 1996

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