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An Intervention

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Perusing the The Evening Times, I came across these lines in regard to an accusation of bias on my part by a reader: “It’s clear you wish a return to the good old Jim Crow days and believe that Trump will return you to them.”

Immediately, I recognized a urgent call for an intervention, for there is a maxim out there that applies in just such a situation as this—it goes like this: “People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.”

So, having read this obvious cry for help, I will stand in the gap here and as an act of public service, offer my help in rendering emergency assistance to the reader—in an attempt to help this Dear Reader find out more on the subject of Jim Crow.

There are two methods that can be used here to find the truth of the matter, re: Jim Crow laws: Method #1-Go to a computer.

Turn it on.

Find a search engine.

Type in the words, “Jim Crow.”

And hit the enter button.

The information on Jim Crow will appear, and all you have to do is read it.

OR: Method #2—Just read the following snippet from the article: “Jim Crow and African American Life,” from what is described as “A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook on the site called, ‘The American YAWP.’ It is put out by Stanford University Press, and has the work of hundreds of eminent American history professors, who provide content on its internet site.

Your choice?

See HALL, page A7

Robert L.

Hall The Wordaholic

From page A4

Here’s the bottom line from the article. Hope it helps?

“In the South, electoral politics remained a parade of electoral fraud, voter intimidation, and race-baiting. Democratic Party candidates stirred southern whites into frenzies with warnings of “negro domination” and of Black men violating white women. The region’s culture of racial violence and the rise of lynching as a mass public spectacle accelerated. And as the remaining African American voters threatened the dominance of Democratic leadership in the South, southern Democrats turned to what many white southerners understood as a series of progressive electoral and social reforms—disenfranchisement and segregation. Just as reformers would clean up politics by taming city political machines, white southerners would “purify” the ballot box by restricting Black voting, and they would prevent racial strife by legislating the social separation of the races. The strongest supporters of such measures in the South were progressive Democrats and former Populists, both of whom saw in these reforms a way to eliminate the racial demagoguery that conservative Democratic party leaders had so effectively wielded.

Leaders in both the North and South embraced and proclaimed the reunion of the sections on the basis of white supremacy.”

(Did you notice, Dear Reader, that the word ‘Democrat’ turned up five times in the preceding narrative?)

“Between 1895 and 1908, the rest of the states in the South approved new constitutions including these disenfranchisement tools. Six southern states also added a grandfather clause, which bestowed suffrage on anyone whose grandfather was eligible to vote in 1867. This ensured that whites who would have been otherwise excluded through mechanisms such as poll taxes or literacy tests would still be eligible, at least until grandfather clauses were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1915. Finally, each southern state adopted an allwhite primary and excluded Black Americans from the Democratic primary, the only political contests that mattered across much of the South.”

(Whoops! The word “Democratic” showed up again—discussing their primary process to exclude blacks.)

“At the same time that the South’s Democratic leaders were adopting the tools to disenfranchise the region’s Black voters, these same legislatures were constructing a system of racial segregation even more pernicious. While it built on earlier practice, segregation was primarily a modern and urban system of enforcing racial subordination and deference. In rural areas, white and Black southerners negotiated the meaning of racial difference within the context of personal relationships of kinship and patronage.”

(Oh, my….the ‘South’s Democratic leaders’ raised their ugly heads once again to, quote,” Disenfranchise the region’s Black voters!”) Huh?

Well, now…I thought that Donald Trump and the Republican Party was responsible for Jim Crow laws and wanted to return to them?

That’s what Dear Reader wrote in “Text the Times.”

And, what was the rest of that diatribe?

Oh, yeah: Here’s what Dear Reader wrote: “I agree with making America great but make it great for all citizens and not just for the ones that resemble you.”

You mean the ones that are retirement age?

Or that are men?

Or—maybe—that actually know something about history and the horrid role that the Democrat Party played in “Enforcing racial subordination and deference?”

You mean like that?

Well, yeah—I knew that the Democrat Party was responsible for sixty years of Jim Crow laws.

How about you, Dear Reader? You checked out on it now?

Glad to help…no charge.

Have a nice day!

Robert L. Hall is a resident of Marion and has a Bachelor’s Degree in music from the University of Memphis and a Master’s Degree from Florida State University. He is the pianist for Avondale Baptist Church and a writer of fiction on Amazon eBooks.

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