JQPublic1
Gold Member
- Aug 10, 2012
- 14,220
- 1,543
This is the 21st century Douglass's premise is more on the mark today than it ever was. Liberty is a good thing. Being someone's victim isn't going to get you anywhere.
Douglas' premise was put to the test during the Reconstruction era. During and after that period Backs made substantive political gains and many moved to middle class status.Resentful Whites, angered by this, erupted into unprecedented violence and triggered the rise of the KKK.
Eventually, in 1896 the USSC decision Plessy vd Ferguson curtailed civil rights in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. The separate but equal doctrine lasted for almost 60 years and, ironically, segregation brought Douglas' 1865 speech to fruition in many respects. Blacks did stand on their own two feet and built several thriving communities that were the envy of whites who lived near them. Those Blacks were no body's victims until marauding white terrorists destroyed, murdered and ravished Rosewood fla. and Greenwood, OK. There are your victims and, yes that didn't get them anywhere.
But which party was most responsible for Plessy vs Ferguson being instituted? Before you anti-democrat windbags start to point fingers, I will show that the GOP was no better than the Democrats in that regard. In an anti-civil rights ploy during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the Lily White Movement was created and took root in the Republican Party.Elements of both parties were complicit in that political agenda.
But getting back to Douglas' 1895 speech. The reality of it brought out the worst in millions of whites and the pogroms against blacks persisted into the early 20th century and beyond. The Warren Court ended American Apartheid in 1954. But the bipartisan reception among the rank and file Americans was hostile and at times violent. If you were Black, standing on your own two feet was increasingly difficult. Getting a job in the white world at that time often meant having to put up with racial slurs, jokes , vandalism and outright physical confrontation. The worst tasks were relegated to blacks with no chance of advancement. Education was a luxury few could afford.
Something had to change... The premise of Douglas' speech had become an untenable illusion . Then a set of events occurred in the mid sixties that ushered in the answer.... Affirmative Action!