Dealing with Diversity in America from Reconstruction through the 1920s: The Lost Cause Narrative
Racial policy in the U.S. after the Civil War was supposed to based on the egalitarian principles espoused by Lincoln at his Second Inaugural. However, with Lincoln’s assassination, the Reconstruction Era got off to an ugly start. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) developed to carry on the traditions promoted in the concept of the Lost Cause narrative; the KKK led the charge to carry on the traditions of white supremacy in the South and to resist the ascension of free blacks into public life and administrative positions in government (The Lost Cause, n.d.). Jim Crow laws followed (Schultz, 2018), and segregation of blacks and whites continued well into the 20th century thanks to Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 (). (Schultz, 2018). This paper will show how the Lost Cause of the Civil War effectively sabotaged and influenced racial policy in the U.S. in the post-Civil War period.
With Reconstruction was meant to come a new period of rebuilding in America. People were now supposed to be equal. Slavery was over, and the blacks and whites could live as one people. However, the ideology of the South was not quite as dead as might have been suspected. The South might have lost the War, but the ideals lived on—particularly through the Ku Klux Klan (The Lost Cause,...
The KKK formed to carry on the torch of the Lost Cause—the noble ideas that Southerners refused to surrender—and their formation led directly to the antagonistic spirit that continued to harass blacks in the South. Though freed, blacks now had to contend with a vengeful community that refused to participate in the healing of the nation’s wounds. In popular media, the KKK was portrayed as heroic: for instance, in 1915, Hollywood director D. W. Griffith in his hit American epic film Birth of a Nation portrayed the KKK “as continuing the noble traditions of the South and the CSA soldier by defending Southern culture in general” (The Lost Cause, n.d.). This portrayal helped to carry on the traditions of the South in society.
The spirit of the Lost Cause also proceeded to inform regulations and laws throughout the country. The concept of Jim Crow was manifested by the way that police and businesses and schools and churches all looked at blacks as different from whites. While equality might have been granted them in theory, it was nowhere near perfect. Blacks had to ride separately from whites, had to eat in separate restaurants from whites and could mix interracially with whites all throughout the south (Schultz, 2018). For example, in the 1920s, blacks could not serve together with whites in the Army: they…
