Chris
08-11-2013, 11:31 AM
Just the opening paragraphs exposing some progressive historical revision regarding Jim Crow.
Rents and Race: Legacies of Progressive Policies (http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_18_01_08_anderson.pdf)
Responding to a proposed 1898 law that would racially segregate rail cars in
South Carolina, the Charleston News and Courier editorialized the proposal
as ridiculous. The newspaper declared of race relations: “As we have got on
fairly well for a third of a century, including a long period of reconstruction . . . we
probably can get on as well hereafter without it [the proposed law], and certainly so
extreme a measure should not be adopted and enforced without added and urgent
cause.” The editorial did not stop there. Instead, it employed reductio ad absurdum
rhetoric to declare that if rail cars were to be segregated, there also should be Jim
Crow “eating cars,” the “Jim Crow Bible for colored witnesses to kiss,” and beyond
(qtd. in Woodward 1974, 67–68). In other words, legal segregation on rail cars not
only was unnecessary, but also preposterous.
Yet within a decade South Carolina and most southern states did have the
Jim Crow eating, housing, bathrooms, and, yes, Bibles for “witnesses to kiss” and
beyond, and even the News and Courier would endorse the same policies that it had
formerly ridiculed. Historians for the most part see the explosion of Jim Crow laws
at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century
that required African Americans to be segregated from whites as a natural progression
of racism that followed the Civil War, along with the social upheavals that followed
as black chattel slavery was ended by military force.
In his popular book The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1974), C. VannWoodward
documents the rise of Jim Crow laws, yet he also claims that this development was
ironic because it occurred during the Progressive Era. It is unthinkable to many
historians to connect progressivism, with its emphasis on business regulation and
reform, to an American era of apartheid. Instead, they seem to think along the
same lines as David Southern (1968), who writes that race was a “blind spot” with
Progressives and their otherwise worthy social agenda.
This essay, however, argues with this view, directly connecting progressivism
and institutional racism, especially Jim Crow laws. Just as Murray Rothbard (1989)
demonstrated the important link between progressivism and the American entry
into World War I, we intend to demonstrate that the institutional racism of Jim
Crow did not occur in spite of the Progressive moment, but rather because of
progressivism and that it is linked specifically to the Progressive agenda of economic
regulation. Furthermore, we do not draw our conclusions because some Progressives
(such as Woodrow Wilson) personally were virulent racists, but rather because
the regulatory institutions that Progressives created enabled the Jim Crow system.
Progressivism, focusing on economic and social regulation, created new economic
rents for which different groups of people would compete against one another,
accentuating the already-existent ethnic divides. Because many Progressives believed
that political and economic elites should rule society, it is not surprising that many
of them turned toward eugenics (Leonard 2005), which would only serve to exacerbate
racial conflict.
Progressives mixed ideology, science, and economic regulation and eschewed
the original protections given by the U.S. Constitution, believing that the
decentralized form of federalism and things such as private-property rights and limits
to government actions stood in the way of social reform. Woodrow Wilson (1885)
wrote that the constitutional system of checks and balances was outdated and
needed to be eliminated or seriously changed. It was Wilson who firmly institutionalized
Jim Crow policies in the federal government, where they would remain
entrenched until after World War II. It was also during Wilson’s term of office that
the second movement of the Ku Klux Klan was formed with the president’s blessing
(Freund 2002).
<snip a great many historical details,,,>
Rents and Race: Legacies of Progressive Policies (http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_18_01_08_anderson.pdf)
Responding to a proposed 1898 law that would racially segregate rail cars in
South Carolina, the Charleston News and Courier editorialized the proposal
as ridiculous. The newspaper declared of race relations: “As we have got on
fairly well for a third of a century, including a long period of reconstruction . . . we
probably can get on as well hereafter without it [the proposed law], and certainly so
extreme a measure should not be adopted and enforced without added and urgent
cause.” The editorial did not stop there. Instead, it employed reductio ad absurdum
rhetoric to declare that if rail cars were to be segregated, there also should be Jim
Crow “eating cars,” the “Jim Crow Bible for colored witnesses to kiss,” and beyond
(qtd. in Woodward 1974, 67–68). In other words, legal segregation on rail cars not
only was unnecessary, but also preposterous.
Yet within a decade South Carolina and most southern states did have the
Jim Crow eating, housing, bathrooms, and, yes, Bibles for “witnesses to kiss” and
beyond, and even the News and Courier would endorse the same policies that it had
formerly ridiculed. Historians for the most part see the explosion of Jim Crow laws
at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century
that required African Americans to be segregated from whites as a natural progression
of racism that followed the Civil War, along with the social upheavals that followed
as black chattel slavery was ended by military force.
In his popular book The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1974), C. VannWoodward
documents the rise of Jim Crow laws, yet he also claims that this development was
ironic because it occurred during the Progressive Era. It is unthinkable to many
historians to connect progressivism, with its emphasis on business regulation and
reform, to an American era of apartheid. Instead, they seem to think along the
same lines as David Southern (1968), who writes that race was a “blind spot” with
Progressives and their otherwise worthy social agenda.
This essay, however, argues with this view, directly connecting progressivism
and institutional racism, especially Jim Crow laws. Just as Murray Rothbard (1989)
demonstrated the important link between progressivism and the American entry
into World War I, we intend to demonstrate that the institutional racism of Jim
Crow did not occur in spite of the Progressive moment, but rather because of
progressivism and that it is linked specifically to the Progressive agenda of economic
regulation. Furthermore, we do not draw our conclusions because some Progressives
(such as Woodrow Wilson) personally were virulent racists, but rather because
the regulatory institutions that Progressives created enabled the Jim Crow system.
Progressivism, focusing on economic and social regulation, created new economic
rents for which different groups of people would compete against one another,
accentuating the already-existent ethnic divides. Because many Progressives believed
that political and economic elites should rule society, it is not surprising that many
of them turned toward eugenics (Leonard 2005), which would only serve to exacerbate
racial conflict.
Progressives mixed ideology, science, and economic regulation and eschewed
the original protections given by the U.S. Constitution, believing that the
decentralized form of federalism and things such as private-property rights and limits
to government actions stood in the way of social reform. Woodrow Wilson (1885)
wrote that the constitutional system of checks and balances was outdated and
needed to be eliminated or seriously changed. It was Wilson who firmly institutionalized
Jim Crow policies in the federal government, where they would remain
entrenched until after World War II. It was also during Wilson’s term of office that
the second movement of the Ku Klux Klan was formed with the president’s blessing
(Freund 2002).
<snip a great many historical details,,,>