Southern History Series: Why The South Lost The Second Reconstruction

September 2, 2019 Hunter Wallace Alt-South, American South, Culture, Dixie, History, Identity, Negroes, Race Relations, Racism, Segregation, southern heritage, Southern History Series, White Supremacy, Whiteness 15

Have you ever wondered why the South lost the Second Reconstruction? Why did the Jim Crow South collapse in the 1960s? Why did Martin Luther King, Jr. succeed in redefining the meaning of America? Why did the Civil Rights Movement seem to run out of gas in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

Here’s the vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

The original House version:

  • Southern Democrats: 7–87   (7–93%)
  • Southern Republicans: 0–10   (0–100%)
  • Northern Democrats: 145–9   (94–6%)
  • Northern Republicans: 138–24   (85–15%)

The Senate version:

  • Southern Democrats: 1–20   (5–95%) (only Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
  • Southern Republicans: 0–1   (0–100%) (John Tower of Texas)
  • Northern Democrats: 45–1   (98–2%) (only Robert Byrd of West Virginia voted against)
  • Northern Republicans: 27–5   (84–16%)

Here’s the vote on the Voting Rights Act of 1965:

The House version:

  • Southern Democrats: 22-62 (26-74%)
  • Southern Republicans: 1-15 (6-94%)
  • Northern Democrats: 200-1 (99-1%)
  • Northern Republicans: 113-8 (93-7%)

The Senate version:

  • Southern Democrats: 2-17 (10-90%) (only Ross Bass and Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee voted in favor)
  • Southern Republicans: 0-2 (0-100%) (John Tower of Texas and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina voted against)
  • Northern Democrats: 40-0 (100-0%)
  • Northern Republicans: 29-0 (100-0%)

There was also the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, but it was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which dismantled Jim Crow. The Supreme Court dismantled the White primary (Smith v. Allwright) in 1944, integrated interstate transportation (Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia) in 1946, ended restrictive covenants (Shelly v. Kraemer) in 1948, integrated public schools (Brown in 1954), integrated public transportation (Gayle v. Browder) in 1956, struck down anti-miscegenation laws (Loving v. Virginia) in 1967 and began forced busing to achieve desegregation (Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg ) in 1971. The Cold War presidents from Truman to LBJ pushed the Second Reconstruction until Nixon was elected to quell it.

The mainstream respectable types fought back through the Citizens’ Councils, massive resistance and nullification. The violent vanguardists joined the Klan and fought back through bombings and shootings. The Southern states passed hundreds of new segregation laws. Some people got so mad that they began voting for the Republican Party. At the end of the day, 90 percent of Southerners in Congress voted against the two bills that ended Jim Crow which only passed because Northern and Western Democrats and Republicans were even more united behind the Second Reconstruction which came to an end only when the social revolution that they had unleashed began to engulf them too.

This war was lost outside the South in the North and West where White racial attitudes, particularly those of upper middle class suburbanites, changed between 1938 and 1965. After the Second World War, civil rights surged to the top of the national agenda during the Truman administration and was pushed forward by both parties at all costs in spite of the political consequences.

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14 Comments

  1. “Have you ever wondered why the South lost the Second Reconstruction?”

    I never have. I just assumed it was the fact that the Federal Government is dominated by Yankeedom. Which can, and does, easily outvote the South and the Interior West.

    Which is why I find the Northern, and especially Northeastern, SJWs’ demands for the dismantling of the Electoral College to be peculiar, to say the least.

  2. Many of these Southern politicians who opposed Civil Right Movement in the 60s became total sellouts and cucks afterwards. They were not very honourable people. They knew how to bend for their masters to achieve personal ambitions.

  3. Now the Federal Government is transforming the South into a Third World section through migration from shithole countries, most of this migration being illegal, too. The demographics are very poor for Florida, Texas and Georgia with all three states becoming majority colored in a few years unless current trends are reversed. The only upside is that the demographic transformation to majority colored in those states will cause the Republican party to go extinct like its predecessor the Whigs in 1850’s.

  4. The white South is a minority in the Union and by 2030 or 2040 whites will be a minority in the United States. What the Feds have done to the South reeks of what Stalin did to the Ukrainians. Whole sections of the South from Southern Arkansas to the Atlantic coast across the black belt reaching down to below Jackson have been destroyed. Entire Southern communities have ceased to exist that were once thriving.They have literally destroyed our world! Integration has been a dismal failure but it is praised daily in the media much like the Soviet media boasted about the success of its latest 10 year plan when all the citizens knew it was a lie but to say so would risk confined in a gulag just as white Southerns know integration was a dismal failure and community wrecker but cannot say so if they want a life and must praise it to the high heavens! As in the Soviet Union so also in the United States!

    Remember the movie the Green Book? That portrayed a black America before integration days that owned their own hotels, restaurants, buses, camp groups, car dealerships, vacation stops….where are all those now? Gone with the wind! So it also had a devastating effect on the black community!

    • The “civil rights” leaders never gave a damn about Black people, only wrecking the South first then the rest of the country later. They also carved out lucrative careers for themselves in the “non profit” field and politics. When has Elijah Cummings done an honest day’s work since 1964?

      After their legislation got passed in 1964 and 1965 they abandoned the Black people they were supposedly trying to help. BHO walked across the bridge at Selma, got his picture taken then bolted back to DC. There’s the metaphor for the whole dishonest “civil rights” racket, just a bunch of grifters and Communist political hacks.

  5. The premise implicit in the U.S. Government transforming the country in to a Third World shithole is that the country will continue to function at a first world level. The advocates of minorities in the U.S. have a religious belief in equality as the highest good and claim that “New Americans” will be competent, law abiding, orderly, intelligent etc. These advocates of destruction won’t talk about their diverse traditions such as female genital mutilation, child marriage, incest (looking at you here Ilan Omar, D. Mogadishu), violence and corruption.

    California is a prime example of a wealthy, beautiful, high functioning state full of opportunities when it was overwhelmingly white a few decades ago. Now much of it has been ruined by millions of non-whites especially the southern third of the state. Parks are full of trash because in Mexico people just litter, Aztec savage gangs torture each other and create no go zones and schools are violent and packed with illiterates. Poverty has exploded and everyone knows about the homeless problems.

    The electric grid failed in places last year and caused fatal fires because PG&E doesn’t have the money for maintenance. The water system bringing millions of gallons of fresh water to the arid south and farms in the Central Valley is decrepit and prone to failure while State and local Government can do nothing but spend uselessly and rack up unpayable debts while politicians and their friends get wealthy. The only reason California still functions at all is because of legacy investments, the remaining white people and the fact that for now the Federal Government is still functioning.

    The rot in California is uneven but prevalent in much of the state as it is also in the rest of the country, more or less. U.S. Government policy is to ruin the remaining productive, decent areas and make the whole country Third World but still act as though the U.S. is a First World nation. The U.S. now has no reserves of social or financial capital, the industrial base is a shadow of its former glory and Government at all levels is stuffed with incompetent minorities. When this Mulligan stew of diversity is tested by events like Pearl Harbor, a stock market crash, bank failures or another Cuban Missile crisis the country will fail. Diversity isn’t our greatest strength.

    • This post is a classic example of panicked WN overstatement. I think main effect of this rhetoric is to drive existing WNs to ever deeper pits of despair, while it remains resolutely ignored or scoffed at by everyone else. A less vehement approach is required if the aim is to encourage whites to ponder their racial predicament.

      When this Mulligan stew of diversity is tested by events like Pearl Harbor, a stock market crash, bank failures or another Cuban Missile crisis the country will fail.

      You mean like a 9/11 or a Global Financial Crisis? The country was not significantly whiter in 2001-2008 than it is today, yet the country hardly seemed on the brink of collapse in those trying times. I guess the great collapse will have to be rescheduled once again, just as has been the case in the last 50-60 years of failed collapse predictions.

      • Ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf? Eventually the the wolf ate the sheep. Yes, 50 years is a long time muddling through but all good things come to an end. Better a year early than a day late as far as preparing goes.

  6. Mr. Wallace,

    I just played one of the videos above. They were playing Ava Maria. In my mind the most perfect beautiful song ever composed. Composed by a wonderful German named Schubert. I know he is Austrian but to me they are the same.

    So, I thank you immensely for this.

  7. In case some of you will be interested to take a look at it, I’m going to post a link to a book I cited in a comment at an earlier Occidental Dissent entry (“Southern History Series: The Second Reconstruction,” September 1) …

    https://books.google.com/books?id=OmmhAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Origins+of+the+African-American+Civil+Rights+Movement&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5kPyW3LTkAhVQn-AKHW7lAi4QuwUwAHoECAMQBQ#v=onepage&q=The%20Origins%20of%20the%20African-American%20Civil%20Rights%20Movement&f=false

    The book is entitled “The Origins of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.” The author is one Ai-min Zhang, who, at the close of the “Acknowledgments,” at the book’s head, signs as follows:

    Zhang Aimin
    Department of History
    Anshan Normal University
    Anshan, Liaoning
    China
    January 2002

    Really–I suggest you take a look at the book. Read simply the Introduction’s opening paragraph. Well, here, I’ll transcribe it:

    “As a long and large-scale social and political movement, the African American civil rights movement occupies a very important position in American history. It may be said that the civil rights movement was another significant movement in pursuit of national liberation following President Lincoln’s emancipation of the Negroes. This was a spontaneous struggle participated in by African Americans and other minorities seeking to end segregation and other forms of discrimination and to secure rights equal to those enjoyed by whites. The depth and width of its influence extends far beyond those of any other movement in American history. Research on this subject not only provides a better understanding of the nature and problems of American democratic system. It also contributes to an understanding of the roles and limitations of social movements in the perfection of the democratic system.”

    To an academic, who might be used to seeing history scholars write in detail about subjects having to do with countries other than their own, that book, with that opening paragraph, might not be surprising. To me, on the other hand, it was a shock. When I encountered it, online, I was simply searching for a reference to the origin of the American Anthropological Association’s 1938 statement against racism, which statement our host, Mr. Wallace, had mentioned in the Occidental Dissent entry. When I saw the book, I was shocked, as I say, that the whole mythology, as it were, of the so-called civil rights movement had penetrated to China. Inasmuch as the sculptor who carved the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, in Washington, is Chinese, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

    The first sentence of the “Acknowledgments” seems to indicate that the book began as a Ph.D. dissertation.

    • Just look into (((who))) were the presidents of the naacp for the first 70 years of that organization’s history.

      Every. Single. Time.

  8. I was always under the impression that mainstream opposition to the “Civil Rights” movement died almost overnight after the Birmingham church bombing. Prior to that event, there had been lots of opposition (in the North as well as in the South) by what today’s kiddies would call “normies”.

    But then the bomb went off in the Birmingham church and the previous widespread opposition instantly faded away almost instantly ,as no one wants to be associated with people who kill children. (teenagers would be more correct, but the leftist controlled press of the time instantly began constant hand wringing and outrage about the “four little girls”)

    This is the big danger of political violence. It can often be quite destructive to the cause it is seeking to aid. Had a couple of nobodies from a klanlike group (there has been no actual Klan in the US since the late ’40s when the Second Klan shut up shop) the desegregation movement might have been less successful.

    What do you think, HW? Am historically off base in this view?

    • MLK’s Birmingham campaign was in April and May 1963.

      George Wallace’s “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” was in June 1963.

      JFK called for civil rights legislation to secure voting rights and end segregation in June 1963.

      MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech was in August 1963.

      The Birmingham Church bombing was in September 1963.

      JFK was assassinated in November 1963.

    • I believe you are right on the money especially about there being lots of opposition in the North to so-called “civil rights”. In 1964 there was a near monopoly on public information i.e. TV, newspapers, magazines, radio and movies. All were basically in the same hands and presented the same narrative to the public which was their job of course; not to tell the truth but to reinforce the prevailing narrative.

      Things are different today with much more choice which has eroded the Left Wing Establishment’s ability to present its narrative as the true and complete story. The result has been de-platforming, losing sponsors, vilification in the approved press, doxxing etc. In spite of this censorship the truth is breaking through. Many thanks to HW and those like him for spreading the truth in spite of now being on the $PLC’s hate list.

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