A History Lover's Guide to Washington, D.C.: Designed for Democracy (History & Guide) by Fortier Alison

Author:Fortier, Alison [Fortier, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2014-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

One of the great “what ifs” in American history is, “What if Abraham Lincoln had survived” to lead the country through the immediate aftermath of the Civil War?

Initially, prospects for racial equality in the federal district of Columbia looked promising. In 1869, the Washington City Council passed laws banning racial discrimination. Congress had already approved legislation banning discrimination on the basis of race on public transportation.

But President Andrew Johnson (1865–69) showed little determination to enhance or even maintain the gains made by African Americans during and after the Civil War. The Freedmen’s Bureau, underfunded and understaffed, languished until President Ulysses S. Grant closed it in 1872. The United States Army took over Arlington and shut down Freedman’s Village in 1887, evicting its inhabitants.

Over the next forty years, black citizens lost the gains they had made. In 1896, the state of Louisiana had more than 130,000 registered black voters. Ten years later, this number was only 1 percent of that. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, southern states passed “Jim Crow” laws, named for a character in a minstrel show. These laws segregated blacks from whites in all public places, including schools, buses, restaurants, restrooms and theaters. In Washington, D.C., the laws banning discrimination became known as the “lost laws” because they were no longer observed.

The federal government sanctioned segregation in 1896 when the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” was legal and constitutional. Separate but equal became a code name for segregation that offered anything but equality to African Americans. The federal government would look the other way until well into the twentieth century.

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