Still waging a Civil War
11th April 2016 · 0 Comments
By. Rev. Susan K. Smith
George Curry Media Columnist
I remember when I was a teen and former Alabama segregationist Gov. George Wallace was running for president. To me, he was a hateful, vile and scary man. Wallace was angry that the federal government had dared interfered in the “right” of the South to practice segregation. When he was first elected governor, he declared in his inaugural speech on Jan. 14, 1963: “Segre-gation now. Segregation tomorrow. And segregation forever!” The crowd cheered wildly at his words, and I remember feeling sick.
Five years later, when Wallace ran for president, I wondered, “What if this man won the presidency?” Black people would be thrust into their own Dark Ages, as they had been for decades in this country. White people were mad that Black people were gaining ground, gaining a voice, and gaining power.
That was not supposed to happen; the Civil War was fought to preserve the institution of slavery, no matter how much some may want to deny it. And when the South lost that war, a spirit of defeat, despair, and defiance seemed to take root.
As history.com recounts, “The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some four million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of significant challenges. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive ‘Black codes’ to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African Americans.
“Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction, which began in 1867, newly enfranchised Blacks gained a voice in government for the first time in American history, winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces – including the Ku Klux Klan-would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.”
Many in the South felt like Black people were getting too “uppity” even before the Civil War; Southern barristers felt the need to keep Black people in their place, as articulated by United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Writing for the 7-2 majority in the Dred Scott case in 1857 that ruled that Blacks were not citizens of the U.S., he said Blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
The South fought to preserve slavery and the Southern “way of life,” resulting in the Civil War from 1861-1865. Despite having lost the way, the war continued at another level. White Southerners could and did fight the Supreme Court order to desegregate the schools; they fought against the right of Black people to vote; they fought to keep Black people “in their place.”
Not only are the Black people “out of their place,” but now there is this intrusion into America of all these Brown people, Mexicans and Muslims. In other words, people who, in essence, just are not the Aryan model that the South and this country deemed to be “supreme” and superior to people of color.
And the people — mostly in the South but all over these United States — are spitting mad. They are mad enough to fight. They are soldiers without uniforms. They are ready to “take their country back,” and they are not fooling.
The South’s loss of the Civil War damaged its pride. When they lost the war, they felt all that comes with losing: shame, anger, second-guessing …but also a determination to go back and win next time. And that’s what it feels like is happening now.
Politicians, from Donald Trump to Marco Rubio to Ted Cruz to Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin, have tapped into the wounded and shamed hearts of so many white people who feel like the white man’s country, as if it were ever their, is being overtaken by ne-er do wells, who are sucking the royal breath out of America’s idealized democracy and heritage. To them, America is a white man’s country; it was created by God to be so, and the intrusion of their country by “others” is as offensive as is the smell of mulch on a weeded garden.
Donald Trump (and the others) are the generals of this war. He is …and the others are …as deified and revered as was Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. America today is still fighting for the return of “Dixie.” White people want their Southern history, with its assumption of the righteousness of White supremacy, put back in place.
The Civil War …is still with us; there will be battles of note to come. The vanquished are still working to become, finally, the victors they believe they should have always been.
Rev. Susan K Smith, an ordained UCC minister, is available to speak and preach on the intersectionality of race, religion and politics. She can be reached at revsue-kim@sbcglobal.net.
This article originally published in the April 11, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
