The U.S. Civil war ended in 1865, and the Reconstruction Act created five Confederacy districts essentially under Martial law protecting the blacks and keeping the peace with Federal troops. The 14th Amendment in 1868 gave blacks citizenship, and the 15th Amendment created the ‘black vote.’ The U.S. Supreme Court left the responsibility for citizens rights up to the individual states. In 1877, at the end of Reconstruction, the conditions for the black citizens deteriorated rapidly. The Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests and other schemes to deny most blacks their ‘black vote.’ It was at this time the Ku Klux Klan began terrorizing the blacks to the point of a mass migration Northward in what has been referred as the Black exodus. The American Colonization Society was founded and created Monrovia, a colony in Northwest Africa. Very few blacks volunteered to re-colonize back to Africa. That colony is today the African country…Liberia. When investigating the evolution of the ‘black vote’ in American politics, it seems the black citizen was a ‘race’ without a country or any meaningful political representation. Then something happened that made the ‘black vote’ very important…the Russian revolution in 1917. That revolution was captured by the Marxist/Socialist ideological movement that was developing in the growing struggle between Capitalism and Socialism. After the revolution resulted in the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics(USSR) the movement spread to the U.S. and saw the founding of the Communist Party USA in 1919. White intellectual idealogs quickly saw the potential of the ‘black vote’ for political influence and began pandering to the black citizen and beginning to make the ‘black vote’ desireable. This new ideological struggle would see the enfranchisment of the black citizen and the importance of the ‘black vote.’ The ‘racial’ struggle would now join the ‘class’ struggle in American politics. In the early 20th Century the Socialist movement began preaching socialism would solve the problems of the working class…both black and white. Many Black churches began to preach that religion and socialism had the same goals. Some of the most influential white socialist leaders helped the black leaders found organizations like the NAACP in 1909. And the black voter found themselves the central focus of the Communist party. When the movement for desegregation and integration came about there was a loud cry that it was a ‘communist plot’ to bring about the destruction of America. Finally during the Truman administration in the 1940′s, Truman issued an Executive Order ending racial segregation in the U.S. military, and from that point on the ‘black vote’ has been a big part in the Political party competition and struggle in the combination ‘class and racial’ problems of America.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 21:43:47 +0000
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