Jim Crow Laws Quotes
Vardaman, on of America’s worst racists, was one of the main drafters of that constitution. This is an example of why the Voting Rights Act was later needed to unravel a endemic system of keeping African Americans from voting or having any part in politics.
This was art of the Nixon "Southern Strategy" to alienate the white supremacists and racists from the Democratic Party with Civil Rights legislation and rhetoric, and get most of them to become Republicans. But as Phillips observed, when Negroes began voting in significant numbers in the South the party switching really accelerated.
The rich whites won the class war by splitting the poor and working class with race hatred and then coopting one half—the poor whites so that neither the poor whites or blacks obtained much and even into the 21st century the poor of the American South were the worst off of all the poor in America.
The President had frequent stag (men only) dinners of national notables. At this dinner, the Chief Justice was seated close to the attorney who was representing the Southern segregationists in the Brown v Board of Education case that was before the court. Warren had objected to being in such close proximity to one party to a case before the court. Eisenhower, had taken Warren aside to smooth any bad feelings and thinking Warren might be distressed by the attorney’s racist and segregationist views tried to explain the Southern point of view. Although Eisenhower was not a racist or segregationist himself, he had worked closely with Southerners his whole career, and thought he understood them. Warren was so surprised by the President’s insensitive remark, that he noted it and revealed it in his memoirs.
Professor Egerton documents how successful Reconstruction was in radically changing the positions of Blacks in the South. He points out that it was so effective that a hate-filled, racist group of Southern White terrorists, with murder, arson, torture and intimidation took over many of the governments of the South while President Andrew Johnson, who although he believed in the Union, was himself an inveterate racist and opponent of emancipation, would not use the force of the Federal Government to bring the terrorists to justice. (The KKK leaders were known in every state and county). They successfully overthrew Reconstruction and set the process back by 100 years.
Austin personally found slavery very repugnant:. But slavery was a part of the early fragile Texas economy and Austin's moral compunctions were subjugated to his perception of economic necessity:
