Fear, Violence, Race Relations in Post-Reconstruction South
Fear, Violence, and Race Relations in Post-Reconstruction South
The failure of Reconstruction in the South in the late 1800’s led to a specific mentality felt throughout society. Black inferiority was not to be questioned or contested. Fear was constantly haunting the minds of African-Americans and all aspects of their lives. Violence was used for power and control both by the blacks and whites, and became a dominant aspect of Southern lifestyle. The relationships between blacks and whites in post-Reconstruction South were defined by the roles fear and violence came to play in society.
The institution of slavery became an issue of race, whites above blacks, a social role that was not to be violated. While enslaved black men, women, and children endured a great deal of violent beatings and sexual abuse, all used by the whites to exert power and control, as well as to impose fear into the lives of black slaves. In 1861 slavery was abolished and many slaves were left with the fear and inferiority that had been strongly embedded into their minds and into social mentality. “Many institutions, public and private, excluded blacks altogether… others offered blacks markedly inferior services” (Foner, 158). The idea of black inferiority was clearly supported and perpetuated by the segregation in society. Foner, in his work, A Short History of Reconstruction, explains how this separation was apparent in both the public and private realms of society. It was clear to the blacks that anything challenging this social order would be problematic for themselves and their families. Blacks who rebelled were kidnapped, beaten, raped, or brutally murdered. “Blacks who disputed the portion of the crop allotted them…were frequently whipped… Blacks working on a South Carolina railroad construction gang were whipped and told to go ‘back to the farms to labor’” (Foner, 186). This brutality was used to remind the blacks of what the whites thought was their role in society, a role the whites fought hard to preserve. The attacks did not need to become a personal experience to have a large affect on the views and behavior of the blacks.
Richard Wright was, for a long time, among the blacks that did not experience this violence of whites first hand but knew of the roles that blacks and whites played into in society. “I wanted to understand these two sets of people who lived side by side and never touched, it seemed,...