Missed Opportunities by Angela Rieck

It is Black History month, and this month PBS is rerunning its series on the Reconstruction. This is the third time that I have watched it, but it never fails to frustrate and depress me.

What a missed opportunity!

A brief history.

After the Civil war, the slaves had been freed, but freedom didn’t include a way to survive. Due to state laws, most freed men and women were illiterate. Few had experience with money management. They had no means of even getting food or clothing.

Lincoln, a believer in helping all humanity, created the Freedman’s bureau to address their needs. Money was tight but the United States held land (850,000 acres) from foreclosures, abandonment, and lien seizures. In the 19^th century, the United States, especially the South, was primarily an agrarian economy. The Freedman’s Bureau planned to loan acreage to former slaves who would have had three years to pay back the loan.

But Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, was a Southerner. Johnson gave the land to white landowners leaving the freed people consigned to a new form of slavery, sharecropping. With nothing left but the right to vote, they elected Black members of Congress and constituted the majority in the South Carolina state legislature. That is, until Jim Crow laws stripped away their rights.

In the best of circumstances, this transition would have been difficult. Many white people could not allow themselves to recognize Black Americans as equals. White people in the South had to create this illusion to justify enslavement. With Southern prejudice, different customs, dialect, and experience, it may have been unlikely that a full integration would have happened in a single generation; but it would have happened a lot sooner.

Instead, white mobs relentlessly targeted and killed Black Americans. Eventually the nation grew weary of the costs of maintaining Black American freedom. The liberal Republicans, then the party of justice, tried to hold on. But, by 1876, with economic problems and the increasingly violent behavior of white supremacists, they gave up. The removal of US troops resulted in the commencement of systematic repression of the Southern Black population.

It has been 150 years, and despite progress, there is still much to be done.

Our country, through the electoral college and the Senate gives more weight to voters from rural and Southern states. In my lifetime, the electoral college has given the presidency to the less popular, conservative candidate twice.

This is unfortunate, because in general rural populations have lower education levels, less sophistication due to  less exposure to the world, less understanding of science (e.g., evolution, climate change), and adhere to more restrictive religious conventions that undermine equal rights. I do not mean to imply that Southerners are less intelligent or less caring, but empathy and knowledge for others comes from exposure and experience.

For example, in Manhattan, where Trump lived and operated, he received only 12% of the vote. New Yorkers were able to see him for what he is. Yet even today Trump supporters believe his falsehoods, deny that he lost the election, and ignore his legal issues (including apparently flushing documents down the toilet). And there is a possibility that our Democracy could have collapsed on January 6^th, 2021, as Trump tried to eliminate democracy simply because he lost.

Southerners created Jim Crow laws. One of the most embarrassing system of laws ever created anywhere, much less in a free country like the United States. Hitler considered using Jim Crow laws to stop the Jews but determined that they were too outrageous.

As long as we give rural areas more power than urban areas, it is likely that we will continue to have regressive politics.

And I fear that in 100 years from now; the overpopulated, polluted, climate-changed world will look upon this time; when we could have addressed our problems and wonder why we didn’t act.

Imagine if we had spent the money that we spent on the war in Iraq on the environment?

Imagine.

Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs, and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michaels and Key West Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.