Reconstruction was shit-canned because white folks couldn’t stomach the idea of treating black people as equals. Same is true of the early twentieth century labor movements. This attitude is the nation’s biggest shame.

...last night I went through Presidential elections since the Civil War and removed the Confederate States. (We never should have let them back in as States until they demonstrated they were civilized.) What I found is that we would have won the last nine Presidential elections.

1992 - Clinton (D) 331, Bush 60
1996 - Clinton (D) 328, Dole 63
2000 - Gore (D) 266, W. Bush 124
2004 - Kerry (D) 251, W. Bush 133
2008 - Obama (D) 310, McCain 75
2012 - Obama (D) 290, Romney 88
2016 - H Clinton (D) 227, Trump 159, Others 7
2020 - Biden (D) 277, Trump 101
2024 - Harris (D) 226, Trump 161

Of course, things would have played out much differently irl. Still, it shows one way we've the price we've paid for letting Southern States back after the Civil War.

I agree w/ your facts, in that when each state was eventually added to the US, it was carefully timed along w/ other states (and their votes too), to be even. So the balance of power over the years have been on the very edge of what both sides considered fair and even, a very fine line indeed.

their political offices back. Sound familiar?

... told me when I was four or five that reason I should never ever put a coin in my mouth was because "some n____ might have peed without washing his hands and might have dropped it on a lavatory floor somewhere."

He was too low keyed about his serious racism, I didn't realize until I was in my twenties what a racist he was. I learned about being a racist on my grandfather's knee. He did too good of a job: Nat King Cole was my favorite TV personality. I never realized he wasn't one of us.

It's crazy, I lived in Cleveland. I would go downtown a lot. My grandfather's office was in the Terminal Tower, My grandmother worked at the May Company, my mother would take to some appointment with a Doctor, we used public transportation both directions, I do not have any memory PoC in Cleveland, a city at that time in the fifties as 30% black population.

I was eight or nine when I saw a black kids by my school and I asked my mom what was "wrong with that kid?" She told me he was a "colored" kid.

Kids learn how to discriminate from adults. I never heard a racist remark from my mother her entire life.

My dad was "liberal" racist. He hated n____s, he was very close to a lot of black folks to the point Roosevelt Dobbs was the "black" Marble Falls brother. When he ran an Enron plant in Houston, he threatened the bank he used with pulling all company accounts unless they allowed his black and Hispanic employees to have savings and checking accounts and be able to get car loans. To him Red Lining was a bad expression. He was a racist with a sense of fairness that included most everyone if they weren't rich.

Both of my parents were born and raised there and I was born there as were my six siblings. Like you, I never heard a racist remark from my mother but did from my father. He was an equal opportunity racist similar to Archie Bunker - there were wops and spics and jews and n_____s and their pickaninnies and the homos. But also like Archie, he had a soft side to him for some things and would give anyone the shirt off his back if they needed it. We were rural people and a different kind of poor, but he would lecture us on what was real poverty if we complained about not having something. He worked downtown and would threaten to drive us down to the Hough area to show us what real poverty looked like. As a child or teenager the mixed messages could be confusing, but I became more like my mother. I just couldn't understand how anyone could not see all people as just human.

... what made it so late, I think, was watching Indian games on TV in the fifties and early sixties where everyone was some shade of gray and the shade did not seem to matter.

I remember when Euclid Beach closed after the owners were enjoined from discriminating against black customers.

https://www.clevescene.com/news/remembering-the-best-ohio-amusement-parks-that-no-longer-exist-42251210/

... is why I have long maintained that the next update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Volume 6 – if ever there is one – should place conservatism at the darkest end of the Sociopathy Spectrum.
With the exception of Mr. Sanderlin, ALL of the people pictured above are the embodiment of pure, malignant evil.

who want to rid the country of immigrants, are Fucking Lucky that the Native Americans didn't have a BORDER PATROL.....
THEIR White ancestors committed an incredible Genocide of an estimated 30-60 Million Indigenous Native Americans and stole their land.........

even here in Denver and Aurora are some of the worst racists in the nation.......

Over the past ten years, the Denver City Council and Aurora City Council have each paid out Tens of Millions for police brutality towards the blacks...........Aurora is actually the worst........Two Aurora Cops and Two Aurora Paramedics have been charged for literally EUTHANIZING a young black who was just walking down the street. That settlement alone was into the tens of millions of dollars..................... Two of the Paramedics were given jail/prison sentences for murder, but are trying to appeal their conviction and get out of any punishment......Not sure what happened to the two cops who were complicit, one of them put the kid in a choke hold until he passed out.....Aurora has had 5 mayors in the past 4 years. They take the job, look around, and quit.......

Totally nauseating.....We have gone backwards 50-60 years............

Those conservative wingnuts' names are coming back to me now.

Things haven't changed for the better, that's for certain.

Racism was rampant. Not a single Black resident. I was too young to know about 'covenents'. Most all the adults in my sphere tossed about the 'N-word' with abandon. The men treated 'their' women like shit as well. I got away as soon as I could. The town is still bright red. The mills have closed, but the legacy remains.

Sweet Mother!
My guess is that 95% of Caucasians in this country have no idea what the sins of this country are actually. I think they think the civil war took care of everything, and I don't think they even think about the first Peoples whose land our great greats homesteaded. Good gawd I wish all that knowledge and wisdom that died during that genocide had been allowed to flourish. I wish white people never found their way here. Imagine how cool the landscape would look if it had never met a European.

So I had Black, Japanese, and Chinese friends; along w my white like myself friends. All welcomed in our home, and I could visit them.
Definitely raised to be anti-racist.

Welcomed all religions, and secular, too.

The Schonberg Library for Black Culture had a big exhibit on Reconstruction in the '90s.

I also learned alot about the decimation of Native American tribes - mostly on my own.

There was a study in the ?early 2000's that more white children were becoming less, or not racist.

Now, if that holds true, and Idk; what we've seen is actually ?less racism (perhaps) over all - so that the (especially too many in positions to cause trouble) racists sense this and howl, and cause even more trouble!!

When Obama was elected President; they could have chalked it up as a fluke!
But then, he got reelected! How was that possible?!
'WTH?!!" Thought the racists!

Some been doubling their efforts to diminish Black people's gains of more equalizing power. Obviously the VRA first in ?'11, or '13 striking own the coverage portion. And now total negation of it!
They found a perfect ally/supporter in drumphf and his people!

Plus certain States voter purges, etc.

Hopefully, the fiercest GOTV effort to take back The House, and Senate will be sucessful!. Then The Presidency to reverse things needed and send the racists back under their rocks!