Jim Crow terror was a reaction against Reconstruction-era Black political gains

Evidence

The fate suffered by Elmore Bolling and his family was not unique to them, or to Jim Crow Alabama. It was part of a broader social and political campaign to violently safeguard the racial hierarchy that had begun as a reaction to Reconstruction and would stretch over the next century. When legal slavery ended in 1865, the formerly enslaved had great hopes. During the next five years, the Reconstruction amendments established birthright citizenship—making all Black people citizens and granting them equal protection under the law—and gave Black men the right to vote. For the first time in the country’s history, Black people had a path to achieving some kind of political power. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 892

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reframing-vs-peripheral distinction: the post-slavery racial hierarchy is here framed as a defense of an existing order, echoing the chapter’s thesis about foundational vs deviation. — connects to: Formal Jim Crow segregation laws emerged decades after Reconstruction, following custom — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2918; White Southerners framed their post-war racial terror as a Christian Redemption — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 87