Republicans' false history of Jim Crow
![Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tK9z7325oDaUgDANhMRcVB-415-80.jpg)
Conservatives have expressed some odd thoughts on Jim Crow of late. Sen. Rand Paul recently told The New York Times that "The Jim Crow laws came out of democracy. That's what you get when a majority ignores the rights of others." Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently said that the idea of a coronvirus vaccine requirement was akin to "Medical Jim Crow … If we still had water fountains, the unvaccinated would have separate ones."
This is a hideous butchery of history — but also a good opportunity to clear up some common misunderstandings. In the first instance, Jim Crow was not a meaningful expression of majority preference. As historian Eric Foner writes in his book Reconstruction, after the Civil War, Congress set up multiracial democratic systems in the defeated southern states. These generally elected Republican governments based on the votes of freed slaves (a majority of the population in South Carolina and Mississippi) and moderate whites.
But as historian Richard White shows in his book The Republic for Which It Stands, democratic, majoritarian governments were eventually overthrown by minority terrorist violence. After Republicans abandoned their Black voters in the corrupt bargain of 1876, removing federal troops from the South in exchange for making Rutherford B. Hayes president, so-called "Redeemers" used threats, beatings, arson, kidnapping, and murder to prevent the Black population from voting. Then once the racists had seized control, they cemented their power by rigging the electoral rules such that it was near-impossible for Blacks to vote — and in the process disenfranchised a good proportion of the working-class white population as well.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
![https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516-320-80.jpg)
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Carlson's whining over the idea of being required to not spread a deadly virus is of course offensive, but also reflects a common misunderstanding of how the resulting Jim Crow system worked. As Hamden Rice, a Black man who grew up under the system, explains at Daily Kos, the primary problem "wasn't that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn't sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus … It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them."
Despite the veneer of elections and legality in the Jim Crow South from the 1890s to 1965, it was the "constant low level dread of atavistic violence [that] kept the system running," he writes. It was a nakedly racist tyranny whose political foundation was a general terror of lawless torture and murder. It turns out a wealthy, celebrity scion of a frozen food empire has no idea what real oppression is like.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
-
Magazine solutions - August 2, 2024
Puzzles and Quizzes Issue - August 2, 2024
By The Week Staff Published
-
Magazine printables - August 2, 2024
Puzzles and Quizzes Issue - August 2, 2024
By The Week Staff Published
-
'In a normal country, their activities wouldn't even be crimes'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
How Biden's enablers may have delayed his bowing out
Talking Points Joe Biden's inner circle faces calls for a reckoning for allegedly shielding the president — and the public — from questions of aging and electoral viability
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
The Democrats 'resigned to a second Trump presidency'
Talking Points Did the assassination attempt end Biden's election chances?
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
How could J.D. Vance impact the special relationship?
Today's Big Question Trump's hawkish pick for VP said UK is the first 'truly Islamist country' with a nuclear weapon
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Are down-ticket Democrats doomed?
Talking Points President Joe Biden's refusal to step back from his reelection campaign has some local Democrats wondering if their own races are in trouble — but not everyone is worried
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Biden, Trump urge calm after assassination attempt
Speed Reads A 20-year-old gunman grazed Trump's ear and fatally shot a rally attendee on Saturday
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Why Project 2025 is creating headaches for the Trump campaign
Talking Points Democrats want to make Trump 'own' the controversial plan
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Biden flopped, but did Trump really 'win' the debate?
Talking Points The president struggled to articulate a clear vision for the country, but Trump's cavalcade of aggressive falsehoods might not do the Republican candidate any favors in the long run
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Why the Hunter Biden verdict isn't the slam dunk Republicans have been calling for
Talking Points After years of targeting the President's family amidst claims of a rigged justice system, some conservatives still aren't satisfied with the younger Biden's three felony convictions.
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published