Emancipation intensified rather than reduced white Southern racial fear.

Evidence

Ultimately, the war ended the South’s economic power, but it did not reduce white fear of Black liberation or the perpetual quest for racial control. To the contrary, white fear and paranoia grew as Southern white people lost control over the Black population in their midst. Formerly enslaved people literally walked away from their plantations, causing panic and outrage among plantation owners. Large numbers took to the streets and highways in the early years after the war, looking for work and missing family members. Some converged on towns and cities; others joined and formed militias. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 381

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Women’s emancipation increased male hostility rather than reducing it. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 298