 |
| Fred Ogden's resting place in Metairie Cemetery |
 |
| The Combine Against the Democracy (Daily States, 1892) |
Today we are going to look at the period of what I like to call "Reconstruction after 1877." The Conservative and Democratic parties may have taken control of every southern state by 1877, but this neither created amity among white men, nor did it really end many of the causes of Reconstruction's turmoil.
But in the 1890s, in every southern state, we see a renewed fight for dominance over state politics. Every state has a little bit different set of issues. But in each state, one side will pursue a strident devotion to white supremacy as the means to defeating its rival. This use of white supremacy in the politics of the 1890s is in many ways more responsible for segregation and disfranchisement than the fall of federal Reconstruction policy in 1877. Consider also that the peak of lynching occurred between 1890 and 1915.
Birth of a Nation came out in 1915 against this backdrop. It was a nostalgic image of the past, but it was also a very carefully crafted propaganda piece for not only white supremacy, but the struggles of the victorious factions in the South. We are going to be thinking about how much the film is actually a projection of the struggles of the 1890s onto the memory of Reconstruction.
Below we have some of the pairings of generational nemeses.
In South Carolina:
 |
| "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman (b. 1847) |
 |
| Wade Hampton III (b. 1818) |
In Louisiana:
 | |
| Murphy J. Foster (b. 1849) |
 |
| Francis T. Nicholls (b. 1834) |
0 comments:
Post a Comment