The Goals And Failures Of The First — страница 6

Rights Movement, forces poor Blacks to remain in deteriorating slums in cities, while whites flee to the suburbs. The de facto segregation that has emerged has shifted the good jobs to suburbs and relegated lower-class Blacks in cities to diminishing job prospects. This has caused rising rates of unemployment, economic desperation, and jobs predominantly in the low-wage sector. This poverty cycle among lower-class Blacks remains after vestiges of legal Jim Crow have disappeared.47 White flight to suburbs and the poverty trap of the inner city for Blacks has been so great that in 1980 the number of segregated schools surpassed the number of segregated schools before 1954.48 Both the First and Second Reconstructions left Blacks with no economic base, dependent on others for their

social and political power. And as in the First Reconstruction, when those political alliances did not serve the needs of the whites in power, Blacks were abandoned and their political and social goals wiped out. In the 1990’s most political leaders have long given up on the plight of the Black urban poor. Mandatory busing is fast being eliminated in major cities, and Black leaders cry out for help to a President and Congress more interested in balancing the budget, cutting welfare costs, and spending on the military then dealing with the complicated cycle of urban poverty. Though, the two Reconstructions held out great promise and hope to Blacks in America, both failed to achieve their broad goals and in subsequent decades much of their accomplishments washed away. Yet, both

brought significant permanent changes. The First Reconstruction ended slavery and the second ended legal segregation. But just as the First Reconstruction disintegrated by the 1890’s because of the failure of the federal government to create a viable economic base for freed slaves, the Second Reconstruction did not result in a fully integrated society because it too failed to fundamentally change the economic condition of poor Blacks. The Black experience in America is a contradiction for there is no one black experience just as there is no one white experience. In the same way, the failure of the First and Second Reconstructions was caused not by one event but by many. The failings of these Reconstructions are not as simple as racism, politics, or individual events; to single

out one to explain such complicated periods gives an incomplete picture of both history and the nature of racism. The leaders of both the First and Second Reconstructions fell into this trap and sought to solve racial inequality through political means. Their failure to see the economic dimensions of racism was key to the demise of the First and Second Reconstructions. While far from the movements only failing it is a factor that has been ignored by historians such as C. Vann Woodward and William Julius Wilson. America still has a long way to go to reach a place where “little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little White boys and White girls as sisters and brothers.” We are still a divided society- economically if not legally. We are divided between

the inner city ghettoes of South Central LA and the mansions of Beverly Hills; between Harlem’s abandoned buildings and the plush apartments of Park Avenue. Racial injustice will never be solved with mere politics and laws, anger and separatism. If we fail to bridge this divide the question of the Twenty-First century like the Twentieth will be that of the color line. Endnotes 1 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) p.228. 2 Ibid. pp.124-125. 3 Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) p. 148. 4 Ibid. p. 152. 5 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) pp.229-231. 6 Daniel J. Mcinerney,

The Fortunate Heirs of Freedom: Abolition and the Republican Party (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994) p.151. 7 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) pp.228-251. 8 The transformation of the goals of Reconstruction was caused by Johnson’s veto of nearly every Reconstruction bill. This forced Moderates to join the Radical Republicans in an alliance against President Johnson. Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) p.153. 9 Ibid. p.159. 10 Ibid. p. 161. 11 A total of twenty-two Blacks served in the House of Representatives during Reconstruction. C. Eric Lincoln, The Negro Pilgrimage in America (New York: Bantam, 1967) p.65. 12 In