I’m really coming around to the thinking that the Civil War didn’t end with enough bodies dancing from a rope. Reconstruction failed not just because it ended too soon, but because it didn’t sever the old power structure at the head.
I believe it came out when Trump appointed him that Bobby Christine either is or was an Army general officer so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on not being a total racist, and if I am wrong, then shouldn't the majority black new district get to elect someone of their choosing next time around?
Like with everything else white supremacy related, these white folks are scared they'll get treated by the justice system as badly as black people are. The fact that a black man is committed to equal treatment of everyone further scares the pellets out of them, equality is the furthest thing from their addled, racist, minds.
Although I am a native Texan and have lived in Houston since August 1971, I grew up in Aiken,SC. Augusta,GA was the city with the Sears and the medical school. Each trip there was another sighting of the “Impeach Earl Warren” billboard. The only benefit to living in the Augusta media market was when James Brown bought the radio station that had refused to play his records. J B Stoner and Lester Maddox political ads and Trooper Terry children’s show more than eclipsed James Brown. Shaking my head
"During Reconstruction, the U.S. government maintained an active presence in the former Confederate states to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves and to help them, however incompletely, on the path to becoming full citizens. A little more than a decade later, the era came to an end when the contested presidential election of 1876 was resolved by trading the electoral votes of South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida for the removal of federal troops from the last Southern statehouses...
Reconstruction was fundamentally about who got to be an American citizen. It was in that period that the Constitution was amended to establish birthright citizenship through the 14th Amendment, which also guaranteed equality before the law regardless of race. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, barred racial discrimination in voting, thus securing the ballot for black men nationwide. As Eric Foner, the leading historian of the era, puts it, “The issues central to Reconstruction — citizenship, voting rights, terrorist violence, the relationship between economic and political democracy — continue to roil our society and politics today, making an understanding of Reconstruction even more vital.” A key lesson of Reconstruction, and of its violent, racist rollback, is, Foner continues, “that achievements thought permanent can be overturned and rights can never be taken for granted.”...
What confounds me is how much longer the rollback of Reconstruction was than Reconstruction itself, how dogged was the determination of the “Redeemed South” to obliterate any trace of the gains made by freed people. In South Carolina, for example, the state university that had been integrated during Reconstruction (indeed, Harvard’s first black college graduate, Richard T. Greener, was a professor there) was swiftly shut down and reopened three years later for whites only. That color line remained in place there until 1963.
In addition to their moves to strip African Americans of their voting rights, “Redeemer” governments across the South slashed government investments in infrastructure and social programs across the board, including those for the region’s first state-funded public-school systems, a product of Reconstruction. In doing so, they re-empowered a private sphere dominated by the white planter class. A new wave of state constitutional conventions followed, starting with Mississippi in 1890. These effectively undermined the Reconstruction Amendments, especially the right of black men to vote, in each of the former Confederate states by 1908."
If we talked about Reconstruction, and how it was systematically dismantled by traitorous White supremacists, many more of us would question how it is this nation has catered to White supremacy throughout it's entire existence.
The forgetting of what is uncomfortable and inconvenient is intentional.
There it is, one of the many reasons I fled from Augusta to Athens when I was 18 and never looked back. Athens has its own issues, but it's radically progressive in comparison to places like Augusta.
Edit: I forgot that Oconee county has been trying to do the same thing that Columbia did, because they don't like our DA.
"Their prosecutor is now Bobby Christine, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Christine was previously a Donald Trump-appointed US attorney. The far-right, “pro-cop” Natalie Paine now serves as Christine’s chief deputy."
Can we do a pool for how long they wait before Christine steps down and Paine is given her "rightful" position?
It's always the old apartheid solutions that the racist keep falling back on.
I’m really coming around to the thinking that the Civil War didn’t end with enough bodies dancing from a rope. Reconstruction failed not just because it ended too soon, but because it didn’t sever the old power structure at the head.
I believe it came out when Trump appointed him that Bobby Christine either is or was an Army general officer so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on not being a total racist, and if I am wrong, then shouldn't the majority black new district get to elect someone of their choosing next time around?
good old American racism and its resulting politics of thuggery is the only train in America that has never not been on time.
The South is a disgrace. Here's hoping a Black person becomes the district attorney for the new district.
So what we do we do about this?
They really don't care about democracy anymore, unless they win.
Like with everything else white supremacy related, these white folks are scared they'll get treated by the justice system as badly as black people are. The fact that a black man is committed to equal treatment of everyone further scares the pellets out of them, equality is the furthest thing from their addled, racist, minds.
They're worried that Black people want revenge for the way white supremacists have been treating them for centuries.
Although I am a native Texan and have lived in Houston since August 1971, I grew up in Aiken,SC. Augusta,GA was the city with the Sears and the medical school. Each trip there was another sighting of the “Impeach Earl Warren” billboard. The only benefit to living in the Augusta media market was when James Brown bought the radio station that had refused to play his records. J B Stoner and Lester Maddox political ads and Trooper Terry children’s show more than eclipsed James Brown. Shaking my head
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
How Reconstruction Still Shapes American Racism/ Henry Louis Gates, Jr./ TIME (APRIL 2, 2019)
https://time.com/5562869/reconstruction-history/
"During Reconstruction, the U.S. government maintained an active presence in the former Confederate states to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves and to help them, however incompletely, on the path to becoming full citizens. A little more than a decade later, the era came to an end when the contested presidential election of 1876 was resolved by trading the electoral votes of South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida for the removal of federal troops from the last Southern statehouses...
Reconstruction was fundamentally about who got to be an American citizen. It was in that period that the Constitution was amended to establish birthright citizenship through the 14th Amendment, which also guaranteed equality before the law regardless of race. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, barred racial discrimination in voting, thus securing the ballot for black men nationwide. As Eric Foner, the leading historian of the era, puts it, “The issues central to Reconstruction — citizenship, voting rights, terrorist violence, the relationship between economic and political democracy — continue to roil our society and politics today, making an understanding of Reconstruction even more vital.” A key lesson of Reconstruction, and of its violent, racist rollback, is, Foner continues, “that achievements thought permanent can be overturned and rights can never be taken for granted.”...
What confounds me is how much longer the rollback of Reconstruction was than Reconstruction itself, how dogged was the determination of the “Redeemed South” to obliterate any trace of the gains made by freed people. In South Carolina, for example, the state university that had been integrated during Reconstruction (indeed, Harvard’s first black college graduate, Richard T. Greener, was a professor there) was swiftly shut down and reopened three years later for whites only. That color line remained in place there until 1963.
In addition to their moves to strip African Americans of their voting rights, “Redeemer” governments across the South slashed government investments in infrastructure and social programs across the board, including those for the region’s first state-funded public-school systems, a product of Reconstruction. In doing so, they re-empowered a private sphere dominated by the white planter class. A new wave of state constitutional conventions followed, starting with Mississippi in 1890. These effectively undermined the Reconstruction Amendments, especially the right of black men to vote, in each of the former Confederate states by 1908."
I feel like we didn't even discuss reconstruction in either HS or college history classes.
And that's not merely an oversight.
If we talked about Reconstruction, and how it was systematically dismantled by traitorous White supremacists, many more of us would question how it is this nation has catered to White supremacy throughout it's entire existence.
The forgetting of what is uncomfortable and inconvenient is intentional.
Just another example of a reason for my long held belief that Gen. Sherman left before the work was finished.
I wish every time some MAGAT threatens civil war the response is “next time we won’t use someone as gentle as Sherman.
There it is, one of the many reasons I fled from Augusta to Athens when I was 18 and never looked back. Athens has its own issues, but it's radically progressive in comparison to places like Augusta.
Edit: I forgot that Oconee county has been trying to do the same thing that Columbia did, because they don't like our DA.
Well, it was bipartisan in the state Senate... in the house - different story. None of the house Dems voted yay, which means NOT totally bipartisan.
Sherman might have done well to have taken a left at Savanah and kept on going.
He did. He suppressed the rebellion in South Carolina with more burning
"Their prosecutor is now Bobby Christine, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Christine was previously a Donald Trump-appointed US attorney. The far-right, “pro-cop” Natalie Paine now serves as Christine’s chief deputy."
Can we do a pool for how long they wait before Christine steps down and Paine is given her "rightful" position?
Other than the governor, these names are all made up to make them sound like yokes, right?
There's a reason that it was called Disgusta, GA.