Historical Context Of JIM Crow
At the end of April in 1877, newly elected President Rutherford B. Hayes removed U.S. Troops from the South, which came to officially represent the end of Reconstruction. Hayes, a long-time abolitionist and civil rights advocate, had agreed with much of the Radical Republican agenda during Reconstruction. But Hayes had also just weathered the most contentious presidential election in American history, winning due to a compromise that allowed him to win the Electoral College by a single vote. Many of his opponents dubbed him “Rutherfraud”, and a fear of a second Civil War was brewing.
This Compromise of 1877 (which Hayes had no hand in crafting), allowed for him to serve as President. But he had to end the military occupation of the former Confederacy, as well as appoint at least one Southerner to his Cabinet, and back off of the issue of civil rights. At this point, the nation was still in the throes of what was called “The Long Depression”, and much of the Republican Party had sought to move on from the hard battles of civil rights to focus more on economics anyway.
Hayes ultimately betrayed his own morals, to maintain national peace. He pledged of his own accord to serve only a single term in office and kept all the promises of the Compromise. By the end of his term, Hayes was popular. Black Americans in the South however soon saw the rise of Jim Crow laws. Former members of the Ku Klux Klan and other domestic terror groups were now “Redeemers”, leading the Southern governments and representing their states in Washington. Hayes’ peace remains an important part of why we are still dealing with many of the issues of Reconstruction today, and Hayes’ reputation has remained middling for so long that it’s now almost forgotten.
(FB)
