Good Morning POU! We conclude our week on the period after Reconstruction that has been called the “Nadir of American Race Relations.”
Overall, however, the nadir was a disaster, certainly for black people. Historian Eric 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, Author James 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.”
Nevertheless, Between the late 1870s and the early twentieth century the modern black community was born; the structure and shape assumed by the community during this period have lasted essentially to the present day. Free blacks and former slaves became politically and culturally fused, black institutions were built on an unprecedented scale, blacks became more urban and increasingly residents of all-black neighborhoods, and blacks undertook greater self-help initiatives in order to survive the de facto and dejure debasement received from all levels of white society.
Among the social and economic changes was a decline in the size and status of an entrepreneurial class (such as caterers and skilled artisans) dependent on a white clientele and the emergence of a class of professionals (such as doctors and lawyers) and businessmen (such as undertakers and storekeepers) that catered largely to the black community.
African Americans also established certain kinds of enterprises for the first time. The most notable of these were banks (the first two were founded in 1888), realty associations, and insurance companies (the first was established in Mississippi in 1889, and the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, currently the largest black insurance company, was established in 1905). Moreover, as blacks became more literate the black press flourished, and new organizations like the Greek-letter fraternities were founded (Alpha Phi Alpha in 1906 was the first).
It was, however, the fraternal orders that enjoyed perhaps the most phenomenal success; through their “mutual aid” function, many served as incipient insurance companies. In the forefront of this growth were the Odd Fellows, the Masons, and the Knights of Pythias.
In the religious realm the most striking development was the rise in the 1890s of pentecostal churches (Holiness, Sanctified), of which the Church of God in Christ, founded in Memphis, became the largest. It was through such churches, located mainly in the rural South, that certain slave religious practices rooted in African traditions (for example, shouts, hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and jubilee songs) were continued and expressed in forms of worship that included spirit possession, improvisatory singing, and the use of drums and other percussive instruments.
Finally, the nation’s two oldest civil rights organizations were formed during this period. The previously mentioned NAACP, established in 1909 by blacks and white progressives, used mainly litigation to win equal rights for African Americans. The Urban League was formed in 1911 to address the problems (notably employment and housing) that newly arrived black southern migrants encountered in northern cities.
Nationally, free blacks and former slaves came together to expand black institutional life as part of an effort to cope with the rising tide of racism. This proves the old adage time and time again, all we got is us.