Post #3287351
2026-06-06 18:28 UTC
The backlash was immediate.
Terrorists rode at night. Teachers were beaten. Voters were threatened and murdered. Elections were overturned. A new story had to be told: that democracy itself had become a threat, that Black citizenship meant corruption, and that freedom had gone too far.
3/14
Image 1: White crowd gathered before the burned offices of the Daily Record, Wilmington, NC, November 10, 1898. Photograph. North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library, Wilmington, NC.
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@Deglassco@mastodon.social 2026-06-06 18:34
By 1900, much of what Reconstruction had built lay in ruins. Voting rights vanished. Segregation hardened. White supremacy became law. The South did not overturn Reconstruction by defeating the Union Army. It overturned Reconstruction by winning the argument about what freedom, citizenship, and democracy were supposed to mean. 4/14 Image:,State troopers watch as marchers cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama as part of a civil rights march on March 9, 1965. Bettmann Archive.