We lived with hope, for a short time.

The Transformational Agenda Magazine 26th Edition

400 Years in Seven Movements
The FIFTH Movement

 

We lived with hope, for a short time.

New local and state laws combined to create a second-class citizenship for black people, mandating segregation in schools, trains, buses, motels, and restaurants; outlawing interracial marriage; authorizing economic exploitation through convict leasing and mandatory labor contracts; barring black people from holding public office, voting in elections, or serving on juries; and providing no protection from the violent terror of lynchings and Ku Klux Klan attacks. Ku Klux Klan violence was so intense in South Carolina after the Civil War that, in 1871, federal investigators found evidence of eleven murders and more than six hundred whippings and other assaults in one county alone. When local grand juries failed to take action, federal authorities urged President Grant to intervene, describing the state as “under the domination of systematic and organized depravity,” which created a “carnival of crime not paralleled in the history of any civilized community.”

Mob violence soon expanded beyond the Klan as white communities grew increasingly bold and confident in their ability to kill black people with impunity.

From the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and continuing to 1950, more than 4300 black people were lynched in the United States by mobs composed of unmasked and prominent community leaders, cheered on by white men, women, and children alike.

The Transformational Agenda Magazine 26th Edition

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