Our changing US History (Part 2)
This continues the discussion about how our perception – and the reality – of US history continues to change and not for the better. This series narrates the many ways that things that once were focal points of our story often have been negated by the increasing inequality in our system. This continues the discussion with our Founders and covers the late 19th century.
Jim Crow and the civil rights era. As taught in a US/VA history class, the Jim Crow era was characterized by segregation in schools, public accommodations, and everyday life; denial of voting rights and other civic rights; and enforcement of these practices both through legal means (poll taxes, literacy tests, etc.) and terror. Several months later in the school year, we would teach that these evils were ended – as a matter of law, at least, by Brown vs. Board of Education and related Supreme Court decisions as well as the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. this topic was a centerpiece of the year and served as a prime example of the expanding coverage of the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
In the 1950s and 1960s, for the first time since Reconstruction, blacks in America made real gains in their political and economic status. In a 12-year period starting in 1964, the Supreme Court banned segregated public schools and ordered them to integrate with “all deliberate speed,” most universities were desegregated, and Congress passed legislation banning segregated public facilities and ensuring voting rights for black Americans. Affirmative action programs were created to make up for past discrimination and discriminatory practices like redlining were banned.
Many of these advances have been eroded or are being wiped out by the three branches of government. The Supreme Court has had affirmative action under assault for several decades and seems likely to eliminate it in 2023.
The Court accepted a lawsuit from Republican state attorneys general claiming that voter discrimination was a thing of the past and for all practical purposes eliminated the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The same states promptly started to adopt measures to reduce access to voting that would have been forbidden by the VRA: stripping voter rolls with no notification, closing polling places or relocating them to inconvenient locations, creating long lines by reducing the number of machines, requiring voter IDs that must be obtained from the Motor Vehicles department and then closing Motor Vehicle offices in predominantly black areas.
Legislatures and governors in states controlled by Republicans have gerrymandered districts to reduce the influence of black voters. And the original target of desegregation efforts, public schools, are undergoing a new round of segregation.
Robber Barons. The Gilded Age robber barons (Vanderbilt, Morgan, Frick, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc.) are given mixed treatment in Virginia history classes. They are credited with creating successful, modern business enterprises, but they are also blamed for oppressing workers, for stock manipulations, and for restraint of trade and other antitrust violations. Progressive era reforms were seen as a direct response to their perceived abuses. But whoever they were, the robber barons were also treated as relics of the past. The larger-than-life corporate titan had been made obsolete by the rise of the modern corporation, r4un by professional management; by antitrust rules; and by government regulation of industry behavior and stock markets.
Most of these reforms (notably antitrust regulations) have been eliminated and a new generation of robber barons (Bezos, Musk, Bloomberg, Koch, Buffett, Gates, Zuckerberg, Walton, etc.) is again concentrating wealth, demanding lower taxes and less regulation, creating substandard jobs, monopolizing industries, and crushing competitors. Just three individuals (Buffett, Gates, Bezos) own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the public.
And, like their 19th century predecessors, they are exercising an outsized influence on our politics and culture. Many of the modern-day robber barons deal with technology and information and their control of what we know is if anything more powerful than the earlier generation’s control of steel and railroads and petroleum. Their wealth gives them more influence over our national priorities in some cases than the government: space exploration, education, medical treatment, etc. And, like Rockefeller and Carnegie and some of the other 19th century robber barons, the new robber barons are also purchasing some measure of respectability – and influence – by taking a minuscule share of their wealth they’ve been able to accumulate through friendly tax rules and spending it on highly visible “good works”: symphony orchestras, art museums, etc.
Gilded Age. The Gilded Age itself (treated in a US/VA History classroom as the period between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Progressive era (more or less 1876-1901)) was itself viewed as a time of technological innovations; growth of new industries such as railroad and steel, and growing economic inequality that led to the temporary threat of socialist and populist movements and led to the reforms of the Progressive era. At least in the neat time periods a US History curriculum defines, the original Gilded age lasted more or less 25 years. The new Gilded Age has already lasted 41 years and no end seems to be insight. The new Gilded Age has also been marked by technological innovation as well as growing economic inequality, suppression of labor unions, emergence of business “stars,” and corruption of politics.