New Day Commin'?

The Republican Congress passed a Civil Rights Act in 1874. For a time, during the Reconstruction Era, Blacks were able to vote, attend public schools, buy land, participate in commerce and generally in the life of society, on an equal basis with Whites. It's not known how this legislation, had it stood, would have affected the evolution of American society, it was overturned by the Supreme Court almost immediately. Lynch Law and White racist control returned to the South. Blacks moved North in huge numbers. Southern Whites voted Democratic. The Republican party was nonexistent and Lynch Law reigned supreme in the South, for a century.

For a short period in the 1960s, beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democratic Congress passed a series of increasingly specific Civil Rights bills. That was all it took. They have changed the face of American society. Whites in the South were enraged and have not voted Democratic since, Blacks, in turn, have not voted Republican. Previously, local law enforcement and courts could simply choose not to enforce or prosecute practitioners of Lynch Law and Jim Crow. Now, they know the Federal government will step up if they don't. It doesn't mean things are fair in the South, it just means the reign of terror is over. A small but significant change, not easily made. One I'd not like to see reversed. How about you?

Legislation alone does not change society. It has taken 50 years for the majority of the population to even begin the internalization of the concept of civil equality. It is still by no means universally accepted. The Black/White divide in America is still deep, even in the face of rapid deterioration in many other racial, religious and cultural rifts that once separated Americans from social intercourse with each other.

The Republican Party in America has now completely reversed its once egalitarian polarization and currently stands as the voice of return to racial separatism and disenfranchisement. They have absorbed the forces of marginalized fundamentalist religion, jingoistic militarism and laissez-faire economics into support for the cause. It's not about Race, they say. It's about State's rights, individual rights and a culture of life. They say.

Will Republican tea bagging, town halling, partisans, be successful in returning the noose, the burning cross the politics of terrorism to the town square? Only time will tell. I don't think so but don't doubt for a minute that's what they want.