The four boxes of liberty is a 19th-century American idea that proposes: "There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. Please use in that order."
Concepts and phrases evolve and are applied in new ways. The
"four boxes" phrase always includes the ballot, jury, and cartridge (or
ammo) boxes. Additional boxes, when specified, have sometimes been the
bandbox, soapbox, moving box, or lunch box.
The phrase in various forms has been used in arguments about tariff
abolition, the rights of African Americans, women's suffrage,
environmentalism, and gun control.
The soap box represents exercising one's right to freedom of speech to influence politics to defend liberty. The ballot box represents exercising one's right to vote to elect a government which defends liberty. The jury box represents using jury nullification
to refuse to convict someone being prosecuted for breaking an unjust
law that decreases liberty. The cartridge box represents exercising
one's right to keep and bear arms to oppose, in armed conflict, a tyrannical government. The four boxes represent increasingly forceful methods of political action.
Origins
Stephen Decatur Miller may have originated the concept during a speech at Stateburg, South Carolina,
in September 1830. He said "There are three and only three ways to
reform our Congressional legislation, familiarly called, the ballot box,
the jury box, and the cartridge box".
This became his campaign slogan in his successful bid for the Senate on a platform advocating the abolition of tariffs.
An 1849 edition of the Family Favorite and Temperance Journal extended the concept: "Four boxes govern the world:—cartridge box, ballot box, jury box, and band box".
The bandbox, originally designed to hold collar bands, was used to carry
the elaborate women's hats of the time as well as many other personal
items.
The quip was reproduced in the 25 December 1869 edition of the Spirit of the Times newspaper and in the 1881 Treasury of wisdom, wit and humor, odd comparisons and proverbs.[9]
African American versions
William F. Butler, an African-American leader, used the concept in a speech he delivered in November 1867 in Lexington, Kentucky, saying: "First we had the cartridge box, now we want the ballot box, and soon we will get the jury box".
Butler was referring to the fact that African Americans had fought in the U.S. military in the American Civil War, but were still facing opposition to being treated as full citizens.
A version that is close to the modern forms was introduced by Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became an influential public figure in the Union States and United Kingdom
before the U.S. Civil War, and had a long and distinguished career
after the war.
In a speech delivered on 15 November 1867, Douglass said "A man's rights
rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box.
Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no
woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex".
In Douglass's autobiography the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,
published in 1892, he described his conviction that a freedman should
become more than just a freedman, and should become a citizen. He
repeated that "the liberties of the American people were dependent upon
the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box; that without these
no class of people could live and flourish in this country..."
Feminist versions
The Altamont Enterprise
revived the old saw of the cartridge box, ballot box and bandbox in
1909 when reporting a discussion between the newspaper editor Horace Greeley and the early campaigner for women's rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Greeley proposed that the bullet box and ballot box went together, and
asked Stanton if she would be prepared to fight if she had the vote.
Stanton retorted that she would fight as he did, with her pen.
The article went on to describe the case of Abigail Hopper Gibbons,
who as a landowner and taxpayer was sent an official form asking her to
give reasons why she was not eligible for jury duty. She replied, "I
know of none". However, at this time women were barred from the jury
box, the ballot box and the cartridge box.
Some women rejected the feminist position. The anti-suffragetteEmily Bissell
saw involvement in the boxes of liberty as inappropriate for women. She
wrote "The vote is part of man's work. Ballot-box, cartridge box, jury
box, sentry box all go together in his part of life. Women cannot step
in and take the responsibilities and duties of voting without assuming
his place very largely".
Commentary
In a commentary on Leonard Levy's book Origins of the Bill of Rights (1999), Professor Brian C. Kalt of the Michigan State University College of Law argues that the saying simply expresses the intent of the United States Bill of Rights
to enshrine and protect the popular sovereignty. It succinctly defines
the four methods by which the people can stand up for their rights.
Taking a less positive view of the idea, in April 2010 the Anti-Defamation League
noted that it is frequently used by anti-government extremists to
justify violence to gain their ends on the grounds that all else has
failed, and cites a typical comment on the Pat Dollard
Web Site: "we've tried the soap box & the ballot box to no avail.
Maybe it's time to start thinking INSIDE the box – the bullet box".
In their book For the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights, Akhil Reed Amar and Alan Hirsch introduce a variation on the theme. Discussing the American Constitution,
they assert that the ideal of citizenship generates four "boxes" of
rights. The first three are the familiar ballot box, jury box and
cartridge box. To these, with some reservations, they add the lunch box:
the idea of a social safety net that supports basic physical and
educational needs.
Modern usage
Time reported that the saying was used in September 1976 by a keynote speaker at a convention of the American Independent Party,
a coalition of right-wing forces. Although delegates disagreed on some
issues, including the extent to which the U.S. should be active in
foreign affairs, all agreed with the saying.
During a March 1991 dinner event organized by the Green River Cattlemen's Association in Wyoming, James G. Watt said, "If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used."
Larry McDonald, a politician from Georgia and former president of the John Birch Society
has also been quoted, omitting the caution to use bullets as the last
resort: "We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap
box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box".
The term is used in newspaper articles, and has been used in a petition to the Supreme Court of California.
"Four boxes" and derivatives have been used in the name of various websites that espouse patriotism and the right to bear arms.
Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter,
The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life (now Scout Life), calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent, and A Guiding Hand.
Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than 4,000
original works in his lifetime. Most of his surviving works are in
public collections. Rockwell was also commissioned to illustrate more
than 40 books, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and to paint portraits of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as those of foreign figures, including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. His portrait subjects also included Judy Garland. One of his last portraits was of Colonel Sanders in 1973. His annual contributions for the Boy Scouts calendars between 1925 and 1976 (Rockwell was a 1939 recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America), were only slightly overshadowed by his most popular of calendar works: the "Four Seasons" illustrations for Brown & Bigelow
that were published for 17 years beginning in 1947 and reproduced in
various styles and sizes since 1964. He created artwork for
advertisements for Coca-Cola, Jell-O, General Motors, Scott Tissue, and
other companies.
Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie
promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including
"Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "God Bless the Hills", which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's oeuvre as an illustrator.
Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. Many of his works appear overly sweet in the opinion of modern critics, especially the Saturday Evening Post
covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of
American life. This has led to the often deprecatory adjective
"Rockwellesque". Consequently, Rockwell is not considered a "serious
painter" by some contemporary artists, who regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch. Writer Vladimir Nabokov stated that Rockwell's brilliant technique was put to "banal" use, and wrote in his novel Pnin: "That Dalí is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnapped by gypsies in babyhood."
He is called an "illustrator" instead of an artist by some critics, a
designation he did not mind, as that was what he called himself.
In his later years, Rockwell began receiving more attention as a
painter when he chose more serious subjects such as the series on racism
for Look magazine. One example of this more serious work is The Problem We All Live With, which dealt with the issue of school racial integration. The painting depicts Ruby Bridges, flanked by white federal marshals, walking to school past a wall defaced by racist graffiti. This 1964 painting was displayed in the White House when Bridges met with President Barack Obama in 2011.
Life
Early years
Scout at Ship's Wheel, 1913
Norman Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894, in New York City, to Jarvis Waring Rockwell and Anne Mary "Nancy" (née Hill) Rockwell. His father was a Presbyterian and his mother was an Episcopalian; two years after their engagement, he converted to the Episcopal faith. Rockwell's earliest American ancestor was John Rockwell (1588–1662), from Somerset, England, who immigrated to colonial North America, probably in 1635, aboard the ship Hopewell and became one of the first settlers of Windsor, Connecticut. Rockwell had one brother, Jarvis Jr., older by a year and a half.
Jarvis Sr. was the manager of the New York office of a Philadelphia
textile firm, George Wood, Sons & Company, where he spent his entire
career.
After that, Rockwell was hired as a staff artist for Boys' Life.
In this role, he received 50 dollars' compensation each month for one
completed cover and a set of story illustrations. It is said to have
been his first paying job as an artist. At 19, Rockwell became the art editor for Boys' Life, published by the Boy Scouts of America. He held the job for three years, during which Rockwell painted several covers, beginning with his first published magazine cover, Scout at Ship's Wheel, which appeared on the Boys' Life September 1913 edition.
Association with The Saturday Evening Post
Rockwell's first Scouting calendar, 1925Saturday Evening Post cover (September 27, 1924)Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponnesus. Norman Rockwell, 1918.
Rockwell's family moved to New Rochelle, New York, when Norman was 21 years old. They shared a studio with the cartoonist Clyde Forsythe, who worked for The Saturday Evening Post. With Forsythe's help, Rockwell submitted his first successful cover painting to the Post in 1916, Mother's Day Off (published on May 20). He followed that success with Circus Barker and Strongman (published on June 3), Gramps at the Plate (August 5), Redhead Loves Hatty Perkins (September 16), People in a Theatre Balcony (October 14), and Man Playing Santa (December 9). Rockwell was published eight times on the Post cover within the first year. Ultimately, Rockwell published 323 original covers for The Saturday Evening Post over 47 years. His Sharp Harmony appeared on the cover of the issue dated September 26, 1936; it depicts a barber and three clients, enjoying an a cappella song. The image was adopted by SPEBSQSA in its promotion of the art.
When Rockwell's tenure began with The Saturday Evening Post in 1916, he left his salaried position at Boys' Life, but continued to include scouts in Post cover images and the monthly magazine of the American Red Cross.
He resumed work with the Boy Scouts of America in 1926 with production
of his first of fifty-one original illustrations for the official Boy
Scouts of America annual calendar, which still may be seen in the Norman Rockwell Art Gallery at the National Scouting Museum in Cimarron, New Mexico.
During World War I, he tried to enlist into the U.S. Navy but was
refused entry because, at 140 pounds (64 kg), he was eight pounds
underweight for someone 6 feet (1.8 m) tall. To compensate, he spent one
night gorging himself on bananas, liquids and doughnuts, and weighed
enough to enlist the next day. He was given the role of a military
artist, however, and did not see any action during his tour of duty.
The paintings were published in 1943 by The Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell used the Pennell shipbuilding family from Brunswick, Maine as models for two of the paintings, Freedom from Want and A Thankful Mother,
and would combine models from photographs and his own vision to create
his idealistic paintings. The United States Department of the Treasury
later promoted war bonds by exhibiting the originals in sixteen cities. Rockwell considered Freedom of Speech to be the best of the four.
That same year, a fire in his studio destroyed numerous original paintings, costumes, and props.
Because the period costumes and props were irreplaceable, the fire
split his career into two phases, the second phase depicting modern
characters and situations. Rockwell was contacted by writer Elliott Caplin, brother of cartoonist Al Capp, with the suggestion that the three of them should make a daily comic strip
together, with Caplin and his brother writing and Rockwell drawing.
King Features Syndicate is reported to have promised a $1,000 per week
deal, knowing that a Capp–Rockwell collaboration would gain strong
public interest. The project was ultimately aborted, however, as it
turned out that Rockwell, known for his perfectionism as an artist,
could not deliver material so quickly as would be required of him for a
daily comic strip.
Later career
During the late 1940s, Norman Rockwell spent the winter months as artist-in-residence at Otis College of Art and Design. Occasionally, students were models for his Saturday Evening Post covers. In 1949, Rockwell donated an original Post cover, April Fool, to be raffled off in a library fund raiser.
In 1959, after his wife Mary died suddenly from a heart attack,
Rockwell took time off from his work to grieve. It was during that
break that he and his son Thomas produced Rockwell's autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator, which was published in 1960. The Post printed excerpts from this book in eight consecutive issues, the first containing Rockwell's famous Triple Self-Portrait.
Rockwell's last painting for the Post was published in 1963,
marking the end of a publishing relationship that had included 321 cover
paintings. He spent the next 10 years painting for Look magazine, where his work depicted his interests in civil rights, poverty, and space exploration.
In 1966, Rockwell was invited to Hollywood to paint portraits of the stars of the film Stagecoach, and also found himself appearing as an extra in the film, playing a "mangy old gambler".
In 1969, as a tribute on the 75th anniversary of Rockwell's
birth, officials of Brown & Bigelow and the Boy Scouts of America
asked Rockwell to pose in Beyond the Easel, the calendar illustration that year.
His last commission for the Boy Scouts of America was a calendar illustration titled The Spirit of 1976,
which was completed when Rockwell was 82, concluding a partnership
which generated 471 images for periodicals, guidebooks, calendars, and
promotional materials. His connection to the BSA spanned 64 years,
marking the longest professional association of his career. His legacy
and style for the BSA has been carried on by Joseph Csatari.
For "vivid and affectionate portraits of our country", Rockwell was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America's highest civilian honor, in 1977 by President Gerald Ford. Rockwell's son, Jarvis, accepted the award.
Death
Rockwell's grave in Stockbridge Cemetery
Rockwell died on November 8, 1978, of emphysema at the age of 84 in his Stockbridge, Massachusetts, home. First Lady Rosalynn Carter attended Rockwell's funeral.
Personal life
Rockwell c. 1920–1925
Rockwell married his first wife, Irene O'Connor, on July 1, 1916. Irene was Rockwell's model in Mother Tucking Children into Bed, published on the cover of The Literary Digest on January 19, 1921. The couple divorced on January 13, 1930.
Depressed, Rockwell moved briefly to Alhambra, California as a guest of his old friend Clyde Forsythe. There, Rockwell painted some of his best-known paintings including The Doctor and the Doll. While there, he met and married schoolteacher Mary Barstow on April 17, 1930. The couple returned to New York shortly after their marriage. They had three sons: Jarvis Waring, Thomas Rhodes, and Peter Barstow. The family lived at 24 Lord Kitchener Road in the Bonnie Crest neighborhood of New Rochelle, New York.
Rockwell and his wife were not regular church attendees, although they were members of St. John's Wilmot Church, an Episcopal church near their home, where their sons were baptized. Rockwell moved to Arlington, Vermont, in 1939 where his work began to reflect small-town life. He would later be joined by his good friend, John Carlton Atherton.
In 1953, the Rockwell family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, so that his wife could be treated at the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital at 25 Main Street, close to where Rockwell set up his studio. Rockwell also received psychiatric treatment, seeing the analyst Erik Erikson, who was on staff at Riggs. Erikson told biographer Laura Claridge that he painted his happiness, but did not live it. On August 25, 1959, Mary died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
Rockwell married his third wife, retired Milton Academy English teacher, Mary Leete "Mollie" Punderson (1896–1985), on October 25, 1961.
His Stockbridge studio was located on the second floor of a row of
buildings. Directly underneath Rockwell's studio was, for a time in
1966, the Back Room Rest, better known as the famous "Alice's Restaurant". During his time in Stockbridge, chief of police William Obanhein was a frequent model for Rockwell's paintings.
From 1961 until his death, Rockwell was a member of the Monday Evening Club, a men's literary group based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. At his funeral, five members of the club served as pallbearers, along with Jarvis Rockwell.
Legacy
A custodianship of his original paintings and drawings was established with Rockwell's help near his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the Norman Rockwell Museum still is open today year-round.[59]
The museum's collection includes more than 700 original Rockwell
paintings, drawings, and studies. The Rockwell Center for American
Visual Studies at the Norman Rockwell Museum is a national research
institute dedicated to American illustration art.
Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2001. Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties sold for $15.4 million at a 2006 Sotheby's auction. A 12-city U.S. tour of Rockwell's works took place in 2008.
In 2008, Rockwell was named the official state artist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The 2013 sale of Saying Grace for $46 million (including buyer's premium) established a new record price for Rockwell. Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Reading Public Museum and the Church History Museum in 2013–2014.
Cover of October 1920 issue of Popular Science magazine
In "Annie Hall" (1977) Alvy (Woody Allen) teases Annie (Diane Keaton) saying: "What did you do, grow up in a Norman Rockwell painting?".
In 1981, Rockwell's painting Girl at Mirror was used for the cover of Prism's fifth studio album Small Change.
In the film Empire of the Sun, a young boy (played by Christian Bale)
is put to bed by his loving parents in a scene also inspired by a
Rockwell painting—a reproduction of which is later kept by the young boy
during his captivity in a prison camp ("Freedom from Fear", 1943).
The 1994 film Forrest Gump
includes a shot in a school that re-creates Rockwell's "Girl with Black
Eye" with young Forrest in place of the girl. Much of the film drew
heavy visual inspiration from Rockwell's art.
Film director George Lucas owns Rockwell's original of "The Peach Crop", and his colleague Steven Spielberg owns a sketch of Rockwell's Triple Self-Portrait. Each of the artworks hangs in the respective filmmaker's work space. Rockwell is a major character in an episode of Lucas' The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, "Passion for Life", portrayed by Lukas Haas.
Museum director Thomas S. Buechner
said that Rockwell's art is important for standing the test of time,
"When the last half century is explored by the future, a few paintings
will continue to communicate with the same immediacy and veracity they
have today."
In 2005, May Corporation, that previously bought Marshall Field's from Target Corp., was bought by Federated Department Stores. After the sale, Federated discovered that Rockwell's The Clock Mender displayed in the store was a reproduction. Rockwell had donated the painting, which depicts a repairman setting the time on one of the Marshall Field and Company Building clocks, and was depicted on the cover of the November 3, 1945 Saturday Evening Post, to the store in 1948. Target had since donated the original to the Chicago History Museum.
On an anniversary of Norman Rockwell's birth, on February 3, 2010,
Google featured Rockwell's iconic image of young love "Boy and Girl
Gazing at the Moon", which is also known as "Puppy Love", on its home
page. The response was so great that day that the Norman Rockwell museum's servers were overwhelmed by the volume of traffic.
He designed an album cover for The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (1969). He was also commissioned by English musician David Bowie to design the cover artwork for his 1975 album Young Americans,
but the offer was retracted after Rockwell informed him he would need
at least half a year to complete a painting for the album.
Historian Rayford Logan coined the phrase in his 1954 book The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901.
Logan tried to determine the period when "the Negro's status in
American society" reached its lowest point. He argued for 1901 as its
end, suggesting that race relations improved after that year; other
historians, such as John Hope Franklin and Henry Arthur Callis, argued for dates as late as 1923.
The term continues to be used; most notably, it is used in books by James W. Loewen as recently as 2006, and it is also used in books by other scholars.
Loewen chooses later dates, arguing that the post-Reconstruction era
was in fact one of widespread hope for racial equity due to idealistic Northern support for civil rights. In Loewen's view, the true nadir only began when Northern Republicans ceased supporting Southern blacks' rights around 1890, and it lasted until the United States entered World War II in 1941. This period followed the financial Panic of 1873 and a continuing decline in cotton prices. It overlapped with both the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and was characterized by the nationwide sundown town phenomenon.
Logan's focus was exclusively on African Americans in the
Southern United States, but the time period which he covered also
represents the worst period of anti-Chinese discrimination and wider anti-Asian discrimination which was due to fear of the so-called Yellow Peril, which included harassment and violence on the West Coast of the United States, such as the destruction of Chinatown, Denver as well as anti-Asian discrimination in Canada, particularly after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
In the early part of the 20th century, some white historians put
forth the claim that Reconstruction was a tragic period, when
Republicans who were motivated by revenge and profit used troops to
force Southerners to accept corrupt governments that were run by
unscrupulous Northerners and unqualified blacks. Such scholars generally
dismissed the idea that blacks could ever be capable of governing
societies.
Notable proponents of this view were referred to as the Dunning School, named after William Archibald Dunning, an influential historian at Columbia University. Another Columbia professor, John Burgess, was notorious for writing that "black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself... created any civilization of any kind."
The Dunning School's view of Reconstruction held sway for years. It was represented in D. W. Griffith's popular movie The Birth of a Nation (1915) and to some extent, it was also represented in Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind
(1934). More recent historians of the period have rejected many of the
Dunning School's conclusions, and in their place, they offer a different
assessment.
Today's consensus regards Reconstruction as a time of idealism and
hope, a time which was marked by some practical achievements. The Radical Republicans who passed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were, for the most part, motivated by a desire to help freedmen. African-American historian W. E. B. Du Bois put this view forward in 1910, and later historians Kenneth Stampp and Eric Foner
expanded it. The Republican Reconstruction governments had their share
of corruption, but they benefited many whites, and were no more corrupt
than Democratic governments or Northern Republican governments.
Furthermore, the Reconstruction governments established public
education and social welfare institutions for the first time, improving
education for both blacks and whites, and they also tried to improve
social conditions for the many people who were left in poverty after the
long war. No Reconstruction state government was dominated by blacks;
in fact, blacks did not attain a level of representation that was equal
to the size of their population in any state.
Origins
Reconstruction era violence
"And Not This Man?", Harper's Weekly, August 5, 1865. Thomas Nast
drew this cartoon; in 1865 he, like many Northerners, remembered
blacks' military service and favored granting them voting rights.
"Colored Rule in a Reconstructed(?) State", Harper's Weekly, March 14, 1874. Nine years later, Nast's views on race had changed. He caricatured black legislators as incompetent buffoons.
For several years after the Civil War, the federal government, pushed by Northern opinion, showed that it was willing to intervene to protect the rights of black Americans. There were limits, however, to Republican efforts on behalf of blacks: In Washington, a proposal of land reform made by the Freedmen's Bureau, which would have granted blacks plots on the plantation land (forty acres and a mule)
on which they worked, never came to pass. In the South, many former
Confederates were stripped of the right to vote, but they resisted
Reconstruction with violence and intimidation. James Loewen
notes that, between 1865 and 1867, when white Democrats controlled the
government, whites murdered an average of one black person every day in Hinds County, Mississippi.
Black schools were especially targeted: School buildings frequently
were burned, and teachers were flogged and occasionally murdered. The postwar terrorist group Ku Klux Klan
(KKK) acted with significant local support, attacking freedmen and
their white allies; the group largely was suppressed by federal efforts
under the Enforcement Acts of 1870–1871, but did not disappear, and it had a resurgence in the early 20th century.
Despite these failures, blacks continued to vote and attend
school. Literacy soared, and many African Americans were elected to
local and statewide offices, with several serving in Congress. Because
of the black community's commitment to education, the majority of blacks
were literate by 1900.
Continued violence in the South, especially heated around
electoral campaigns, sapped Northern intentions. More significantly,
after the long years and losses of the Civil War, Northerners had lost
heart for the massive commitment of money and arms that would have been
required to stifle the white insurgency. The financial panic of 1873
disrupted the economy nationwide, causing more difficulties. The white
insurgency took on new life ten years after the war. Conservative white
Democrats waged an increasingly violent campaign, with the Colfax and Coushatta massacres in Louisiana in 1873 as signs. The next year saw the formation of paramilitary groups, such as the White League in Louisiana (1874) and Red Shirts
in Mississippi and the Carolinas, that worked openly to turn
Republicans out of office, disrupt black organizing, and intimidate and
suppress black voting. They invited press coverage. One historian described them as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."
In 1874, in a continuation of the disputed gubernatorial election of 1872, thousands of White League militiamen fought against New Orleans police and Louisiana state militia and won. They turned out the Republican governor and installed the Democrat Samuel D. McEnery,
took over the capitol, state house and armory for a few days, and then
retreated in the face of Federal troops. This was known as the "Battle of Liberty Place".
Northerners waffled and finally capitulated to the South, giving up
on being able to control election violence. Abolitionist leaders like Horace Greeley
began to ally themselves with Democrats in attacking Reconstruction
governments. By 1875, there was a Democratic majority in the House of
Representatives. President Ulysses S. Grant, who as a general had led the Union
to victory in the Civil War, initially refused to send troops to
Mississippi in 1875 when the governor of the state asked him to.
Violence surrounded the presidential election of 1876
in many areas, beginning a trend. After Grant, it would be many years
before any President would do anything to extend the protection of the
law to black people.
"Believing
that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a government to
be carried on by an enlightened people; believing that its framers did
not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population of African
origin, and believing that those men of the State of North Carolina, who
joined in forming the Union, did not contemplate for their descendants a
subjection to an inferior race,
"We, the undersigned citizens of
the city of Wilmington and county of New Hanover, do hereby declare that
we will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled, by men of
African origin.... "
The Wilmington Weekly Star (North Carolina)November 11, 1898
As noted above, white paramilitary forces contributed to whites'
taking over power in the late 1870s. A brief coalition of populists took
over in some states, but Democrats had returned to power after the
1880s. From 1890 to 1908, they proceeded to pass legislation and
constitutional amendments to disenfranchise most blacks and many poor
whites, with Mississippi and Louisiana creating new state constitutions
in 1890 and 1895 respectively, to disenfranchise African Americans.
Democrats used a combination of restrictions on voter registration and
voting methods, such as poll taxes, literacy and residency requirements, and ballot box changes. The main push came from elite Democrats in the Solid South, where blacks were a majority of voters. The elite Democrats also acted to disenfranchise poor whites.
African Americans were an absolute majority of the population in
Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, and represented more than 40%
of the population in four other former Confederate states. Accordingly,
many whites perceived African Americans as a major political threat,
because in free and fair elections, they would hold the balance of power
in a majority of the South. South Carolina U.S. Senator Ben Tillman
proudly proclaimed in 1900, "We have done our level best [to prevent
blacks from voting]... we have scratched our heads to find out how we
could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot
them. We are not ashamed of it."
Conservative white Democratic governments passed Jim Crow legislation, creating a system of legal racial segregation
in public and private facilities. Blacks were separated in schools and
the few hospitals, were restricted in seating on trains, and had to use
separate sections in some restaurants and public transportation systems.
They were often barred from some stores, or forbidden to use
lunchrooms, restrooms and fitting rooms. Because they could not vote,
they could not serve on juries, which meant they had little if any legal recourse in the system. Between 1889 and 1922, as political disenfranchisement and segregation were being established, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) calculates lynchings reached their worst level in history.
Almost 3,500 people fell victim to lynching, almost all of them black
men.
Historian James Loewen notes that lynching
emphasized the powerlessness of blacks: "the defining characteristic of
a lynching is that the murder takes place in public, so everyone knows
who did it, yet the crime goes unpunished." African American civil rights activist Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
conducted one of the first systematic studies of the subject. She
documented that the most prevalent accusation against lynching victims
was murder or attempted murder. She found blacks were "lynched for
anything or nothing" – for wife-beating, stealing hogs, being "saucy to
white people", sleeping with a consenting white woman – for being in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
Blacks who were economically successful faced reprisals or sanctions. When Richard Wright
tried to train to become an optometrist and lens-grinder, the other men
in the shop threatened him until he was forced to leave. In 1911 blacks
were barred from participating in the Kentucky Derby because African Americans won more than half of the first twenty-eight races. Through violence and legal restrictions, whites often prevented blacks
from working as common laborers, much less as skilled artisans or in the
professions. Under such conditions, even the most ambitious and
talented black person found it extremely difficult to advance.
This situation called the views of Booker T. Washington,
the most prominent black leader during the early part of the nadir into
question. He had argued that black people could better themselves by
doing hard work and being thrifty. He believed that they had to master
basic work before they went on to pursue college careers and
professional aspirations. Washington believed that his programs trained
blacks for the lives which they were likely to lead as well as for the
jobs which they could get in the South.
..."it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive
methods, for working men and property-owners to defend their rights and
exist without the right of suffrage".
Washington had always (though often clandestinely) supported the right
of black suffrage, and had fought against disfranchisement laws in
Georgia, Louisiana, and other Southern states. This included secretive funding of litigation resulting in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903), which lost due to Supreme Court reluctance to interfere with states' rights.
Many blacks left the South in an attempt to find better living and working conditions. In 1879, Logan notes, "some 40,000 Negroes virtually stampeded from Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia for the Midwest." More significantly, beginning in about 1915, many blacks moved to Northern cities in what became known as the Great Migration.
Through the 1930s, more than 1.5 million blacks would leave the South
for better lives in the North, seeking work and the chance to escape
from lynchings and legal segregation. While they faced difficulties,
overall, they had better chances in the North. They had to make great
cultural changes, as most went from rural areas to major industrial
cities, and they also had to adjust from being rural workers to being
urban workers. As an example, in its years of expansion, the Pennsylvania Railroad
recruited tens of thousands of workers from the South. In the South,
alarmed whites, worried that their labor force was leaving, often tried
to block black migration.
Black Americans who fled racial oppression either returned to
retrieve the rest of their family or sent train tickets back home. In
response, as white southerners observed train platforms packed with
African Americans, several cities passed ordinances that made it illegal
for trains to accept pre-paid tickets. There were ordinances put in
place to also prevent group travel of Black families or clusters of
African Americans tried to purchase group rates.
Northern reactions
During the nadir, Northern areas struggled with upheaval and hostility. In the Midwest and West, many towns posted "sundown" warnings,
threatening to kill African Americans who remained overnight. These
"Sundown" towns also expelled African-Americans who had settled in those
towns both before and during Reconstruction. Monuments to Confederate
War dead were erected across the nation – as far away as in Montana, for
example.
Black housing was often segregated in the North. There was
competition for jobs and housing as blacks entered cities which were
also the destination of millions of immigrants from eastern
and southern Europe. As more blacks moved north, they encountered
racism where they had to battle over territory, often against Irish American communities, including in support of local political power bases. In some regions, blacks could not serve on juries. Blackface shows, in which whites dressed as blacks portrayed African Americans as ignorant clowns, were popular in North and South. The Supreme Court
reflected conservative tendencies and did not overrule Southern
constitutional changes resulting in disfranchisement. In 1896, the Court
ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities for blacks were constitutional; the Court was made up almost entirely of Northerners. However, equal facilities were rarely provided, as there was no state or federal legislation requiring them. It would not be until 58 years later, with Brown v. Board of Education (1954), that the Court overruled the decision.
While there were critics in the scientific community such as Franz Boas, eugenics and scientific racism were promoted in academia by many scientists, like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, who argued "scientific evidence" for the racial superiority of whites and thereby worked to justify racial segregation and second-class citizenship for blacks.
Numerous black people had voted for Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election, based on his promise to work for them. Instead, he segregated government workplaces and employment in some agencies. The film The Birth of a Nation (1915), which celebrated the original Ku Klux Klan, was shown at the White House to President Wilson and his cabinet members. Writing in 1921 to Joseph Tumulty,
Wilson said of the film "I have always felt that this was a very
unfortunate production and I wish most sincerely that its production
might be avoided, particularly in communities where there are so many
colored people."
The Birth of a Nation resulted in the rebirth of the Klan,
which in the 1920s had more power and influence than the original Klan
ever did. In 1924, the Klan had four million members. It also controlled the governorship and a majority of the state legislature in Indiana, and exerted a powerful political influence in Arkansas, Oklahoma, California, Georgia, Oregon, and Texas.
In the years during and after World War I
there were great social tensions in the nation. In addition to the
Great Migration and immigration from Europe, African-American Army
veterans, newly demobilized, sought jobs, and as trained soldiers, were
less likely to acquiesce to discrimination. Massacres and attacks on
blacks that developed out of strikes and economic competition occurred
in Houston, Philadelphia, and East St. Louis in 1917.
In 1919, there were so many violent attacks in several major cities that the summer of that year became known as Red Summer. The Chicago race riot of 1919
erupted into mob violence for several days. It left 15 whites and 23
blacks dead, over 500 injured and more than 1,000 homeless. An investigation found that ethnic Irish, who had established their own power base earlier on the South Side, were heavily implicated in the riots. The 1921 Tulsa race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was even more deadly; white mobs invaded and burned the Greenwood
district of Tulsa; 1,256 homes were destroyed and 39 people (26 black,
13 white) were confirmed killed, although recent investigations suggest
that the number of black deaths could be considerably higher.
Legacy
Culture
Black literacy levels, which rose during Reconstruction, continued to increase through this period. The NAACP
was established in 1909, and by 1920 the group won a few important
anti-discrimination lawsuits. African Americans, such as Du Bois and
Wells-Barnett, continued the tradition of advocacy, organizing, and
journalism which helped spur abolitionism, and also developed new tactics that helped to spur the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Harlem Renaissance and the popularity of jazz
music during the early part of the 20th century made many Americans
more aware of black culture and more accepting of black celebrities.
Instability
Overall, however, the nadir was a disaster, certainly for black people. Foner points out:
...by the early twentieth century [racism] had become
more deeply embedded in the nation's culture and politics than at any
time since the beginning of the antislavery crusade and perhaps in our
nation's entire history.
Similarly, Loewen argues that the family instability and crime which
many sociologists have found in black communities can be traced, not to
slavery, but to the nadir and its aftermath.
Foner noted that "none of Reconstruction's black officials
created a family political dynasty" and concluded that the nadir
"aborted the development of the South's black political leadership."
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