It's the opposite of Reconstruction, which was run by Yankees and, among other things, finished freeing the slaves.
Ummmmm....Wellllll, Reconstruction was a half-hearted series of federally-mandated actions and policies--but since many black Southerners were involved "Yankees" does not seem precise. It lasted only 12 years, was chronically underfunded, and thus left in place a white, landed power structure in the South that maintained strict legally- and socially-enforced segregation for more than 100 years after the Civil War. During that time thousands of African Americans were lynched, millions were jailed under "black codes" that were simply revised "slave codes", and many lived in sharecropping situations that were barely a step removed from slavery.
We still live with this poverty/wealth gap in the U.S., as the media suddenly, probably briefly, noticed for a few days after Katrina (see below). So did Reconstruction really "finish freeing the slaves"? I don't think so.
The white South arguably won the Civil War when Reconstruction ended. They still maintain disproportionate power in the Federal government, esp. the Congressional and Executive branches; first they did so via the racist policies/ politics of Democrats (Dixiecrats, they used to be called) and, since 1960s, those of the Republican party, which continues to, at best, turn a blind eye to race-baiting strategies when it's not actively promoting them.
Sorry if this seems off topic. But it's not a dead issue. Connecting it to the issue at hand, is this from the David Brooks article, "The Storm after the Storm," which I cited above (he's a conservative, Bush-supporter), but since it is no longer available for free, here's an extended quotation:
Hurricanes come in two waves. First comes the rainstorm, and then comes what the historian John Barry calls the "human storm" - the recriminations, the political conflict and the battle over compensation. Floods wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities. When you look back over the meteorological turbulence in this nation's history, it's striking how often political turbulence followed.
. . .
In 1900, another great storm hit the U.S., killing over 6,000 people in Galveston, Tex. The storm exposed racial animosities, for this time stories (equally false) swept through the press accusing blacks of cutting off the fingers of corpses to steal wedding rings. The devastation ended Galveston's chance to beat out Houston as Texas' leading port.
Then in 1927, the great Mississippi flood rumbled down upon New Orleans. As Barry writes in his account, "Rising Tide," the disaster ripped the veil off the genteel, feudal relations between whites and blacks, and revealed the festering iniquities. Blacks were rounded up into work camps and held by armed guards. They were prevented from leaving as the waters rose. A steamer, the Capitol, played "Bye Bye Blackbird" as it sailed away. The racist violence that followed the floods helped persuade many blacks to move north.
Civic leaders intentionally flooded poor and middle-class areas to ease the water's pressure on the city, and then reneged on promises to compensate those whose homes were destroyed. That helped fuel the populist anger that led to Huey Long's success. Across the country people demanded that the federal government get involved in disaster relief, helping to set the stage for the New Deal. The local civic elite turned insular and reactionary, and New Orleans never really recovered its preflood vibrancy.
We'd like to think that the stories of hurricanes and floods are always stories of people rallying together to give aid and comfort. . . . .
Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come. |
It was already weaker than the aforementioned levee.