What we think of as “segregation” was imposed after the Civil War through what was essentially an insurgent terror campaign against Reconstruction governments. They correctly calculated that the Republicans running the federal government had no appetite for fighting a long counterinsurgency under occupation, so they did what any insurgent terrorist faction does and made the existing occupation so costly that the federal troops were eventually withdrawn. And pretty shortly thereafter, the so-called “Redeemers” erected one-party authoritarian states that would last another 100 years.
The South’s elites had already sown the seeds of massive public resistance in the run-up to the Civil War, where they convinced their population to back their war based on the lie that the North was coming to genocide them all. When the occupation came, any punishment of insurgent terrorists fit into this narrative: the North had won, and was now implementing its plan of “genocide” on an unwilling White populace.
Most “segregation” already existed in some form or another for antebellum free Blacks. Even in the North, most of what we think of as its policy of ethnic “tolerance” was based on an implementation of segregation called “pillarization”: Each community was given its place in the political system, and kept separate from the others in order to prevent ethnic strife. Free Blacks tended to have the lowest place in this system.
Once the bloc of one-party authoritarian states were established, they wielded significant enough power within Congress to block any nascent attempt to challenge their system. On several occasions, they ground the federal government to a halt with the filibuster, causing various subsidiary crises. Opponents were basically stuck at square one, and couldn’t get any traction to undermine the South’s power.
The South also learned its lesson from the Civil War: It was easier to wield filibuster power to defend its own power base, than to try running the whole country. Before the war, the South tried forcing its slave system on the rest of the country, but they were not powerful enough to control the backlash. With slavery now a moot point, the South opted instead to simply focus on defending its internal one-party authoritarian apparatus. This was a much more achievable goal. They also exported aspects of their system in the form of segregation, so the rest of the country was more amenable to leaving the South to its own devices.
Importantly, you don’t need any wars to achieve this. You don’t court backlash when you leave the North alone and don’t try to force them to corral your runaway slaves for you.
The South’s undoing was the Progressive Era and WWII. In order to maintain a viable one-party state by appeasing lower-class Whites, the Democratic Party had to adopt elements of the Progressive platform. These elements brought in Northern liberals, White ethnics, and a growing contingent of Northern Blacks who rejected their fathers’ Party of Lincoln to embrace pro-labor politics.
Ideological cross-pollination between Dixiecrats and the North led to enough defections on Civil Rights to overcome the South’s customary filibuster veto. With a prosperous society feeling nationally united by the aftermath of WWII, there was little avenue to start another Civil War, so the South had no option but to accept the Civil Rights Act.
Except of course, they didn’t. The Dixiecrats defected to the GOP, purged the remaining liberals and progressives, erected a national media propaganda arm, and are currently trying to consolidate minoritarian power over the entire country.
It wasn’t *peacefulness* that defeated segregation. It was internal division brought on by the natural evolutions of coalitional politics and migration patterns. And segregation was never truly defeated. Every time the South has seen a major setback - abolition of slavery, the Civil Rights Act - they’ve regrouped and reorganized to try to achieve their authoritarian dream all over again.
From Quora: On Segregation
From Quora: On Segregation
From Quora: On Segregation
What we think of as “segregation” was imposed after the Civil War through what was essentially an insurgent terror campaign against Reconstruction governments. They correctly calculated that the Republicans running the federal government had no appetite for fighting a long counterinsurgency under occupation, so they did what any insurgent terrorist faction does and made the existing occupation so costly that the federal troops were eventually withdrawn. And pretty shortly thereafter, the so-called “Redeemers” erected one-party authoritarian states that would last another 100 years.
The South’s elites had already sown the seeds of massive public resistance in the run-up to the Civil War, where they convinced their population to back their war based on the lie that the North was coming to genocide them all. When the occupation came, any punishment of insurgent terrorists fit into this narrative: the North had won, and was now implementing its plan of “genocide” on an unwilling White populace.
Most “segregation” already existed in some form or another for antebellum free Blacks. Even in the North, most of what we think of as its policy of ethnic “tolerance” was based on an implementation of segregation called “pillarization”: Each community was given its place in the political system, and kept separate from the others in order to prevent ethnic strife. Free Blacks tended to have the lowest place in this system.
Once the bloc of one-party authoritarian states were established, they wielded significant enough power within Congress to block any nascent attempt to challenge their system. On several occasions, they ground the federal government to a halt with the filibuster, causing various subsidiary crises. Opponents were basically stuck at square one, and couldn’t get any traction to undermine the South’s power.
The South also learned its lesson from the Civil War: It was easier to wield filibuster power to defend its own power base, than to try running the whole country. Before the war, the South tried forcing its slave system on the rest of the country, but they were not powerful enough to control the backlash. With slavery now a moot point, the South opted instead to simply focus on defending its internal one-party authoritarian apparatus. This was a much more achievable goal. They also exported aspects of their system in the form of segregation, so the rest of the country was more amenable to leaving the South to its own devices.
Importantly, you don’t need any wars to achieve this. You don’t court backlash when you leave the North alone and don’t try to force them to corral your runaway slaves for you.
The South’s undoing was the Progressive Era and WWII. In order to maintain a viable one-party state by appeasing lower-class Whites, the Democratic Party had to adopt elements of the Progressive platform. These elements brought in Northern liberals, White ethnics, and a growing contingent of Northern Blacks who rejected their fathers’ Party of Lincoln to embrace pro-labor politics.
Ideological cross-pollination between Dixiecrats and the North led to enough defections on Civil Rights to overcome the South’s customary filibuster veto. With a prosperous society feeling nationally united by the aftermath of WWII, there was little avenue to start another Civil War, so the South had no option but to accept the Civil Rights Act.
Except of course, they didn’t. The Dixiecrats defected to the GOP, purged the remaining liberals and progressives, erected a national media propaganda arm, and are currently trying to consolidate minoritarian power over the entire country.
It wasn’t *peacefulness* that defeated segregation. It was internal division brought on by the natural evolutions of coalitional politics and migration patterns. And segregation was never truly defeated. Every time the South has seen a major setback - abolition of slavery, the Civil Rights Act - they’ve regrouped and reorganized to try to achieve their authoritarian dream all over again.