Our Second Reconstruction
Enterprises and accomplishments flourish where there is freedom and an even playing field. That’s all Black people have ever needed. During most of American history, they’ve not had either but there have been two periods that offered both opportunity and hope.
The first Black business district started in 1837 in free Cheney, PA; James McCune Smith earned his MD in Scotland in 1837; Macon Boiling Allen earned his law degree in 1844 in Maine.
In 1868, the US Congress passed the 14th amendment, of much discussion of late, that guaranteed citizenship and equal rights and protection under the law to former slaves. By 1868, 80% of eligible Black men were registered to vote.
Many of the newly-free people were skilled. Hundreds of Black Colleges were founded. Thousands were elected to local and state offices. Seven men were elected to the US Congress, including two senators.
The period after the Civil War was one of great economic volatility. Although many more former slaves lived in poverty, Black prosperity was met with White resentment and violence.
The brief era of Reconstruction lasted until 1877. The North did not have a prolonged interest in the protection offered by the constitution and the South had already developed “Black Codes,” unconstitutional laws and practices to brutally smash Black achievement, enforced by widespread and violent terrorism of torture, murder and rape by the Klu Klux Klan and similar groups that targeted innocent Black people, particularly those who dared to achieve or own property.
In the aftermath of World War I, Black soldiers returned along with White soldiers, when they competed for jobs and housing. In areas with critical Black populations, they often created clusters of enterprises. The most well-known have come to be known as Black Wall Streets since they often included banks and insurance companies.
By the early 20th century, there were well known Black Wall streets in Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, DC, Little Rock, Jackson, Richmond and Durham. There were many more, smaller districts in towns across the country.
My hometown of Asheville, NC, with a smaller Black population, had The Block, a geographical block of doctors, lawyers, dentists, pharmacists, literary artists and businesses including restaurants, barber and beauty shops and a pool hall.
During the “Red Summer” of 1919 alone, there were riots and massacres in more than three dozen communities. Hundreds of men, women and children were killed, approximately 2000 injured, businesses and homes burned, without prosecution.
By 1921 the Greenwood District in Tulsa had 36 blocks of 600 businesses, 21 churches, 30 restaurants, 41 food stores, a hospital, law offices, a bank, a post office, six privately owned airplanes, a bus system, and two movie houses. Until recently the horrific Tulsa Massacre was largely unacknowledged.
By the 1950 and 60’s Urban Renewal targeted older business and neighborhood building stock and would disrupt many of the remaining Black districts.
Without the protection of the law, despite the codes and terrorism, achievements were slower and much harder but still much was achieved.
My father, James Parks Sr., earned his master’s degree in chemistry in the 1940’s, when only 4.6 of Americans had any higher education at all. Soon after, like many men of his generation, he spent time in the military, on a Navy ship in the Pacific. He was the only Black man on the ship. He noted the ship was launched to the tune of “Bye Bye Blackbird” but he said that he didn’t think they meant him. If anything, the Navy wanted him to be less significant. There was only one other man on the ship with a Master’s Degree, the captain, whose degree was in English. (There’s lots of good that comes from an English degree but maybe less so on a Navy ship.) Instead, the Navy taught my father to cook—he didn’t know how. He became the ship’s cook, a stereotypical job and a waste of scientific talent. My father was bold enough to ask why and he was told that his degree got him the honor of being in the Navy at all. (The Navy had banned African Americans between WWI and 1932 and did not recruit them until 1941. Even then a commission wrote that enlisting African Americans for anything but kitchen jobs would lead to “disruptive and undermining conditions.” In an organization as ordered and hierarchical as the military, one wonders what would been undermined or disrupted, if not the racial order.
Afterwards my father became a Math and Chemistry High School teacher. My mother, Helen Mashburn Parks, also attended graduate school but stopped, as women did at the time, to birth and raise 3 children. They were both schoolteachers. My mother said that no matter what, they could never take an education from you.
Their son would be the first Black man to attend Davidson College on an academic scholarship. His other daughter would be admitted in the first group of 300 Black students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Now, between their children, grandchildren and their partners, there are 6 BA degrees, 4 master’s and 2 Ph.D.’s.
There are those who want to go back to a time when control of minorities and women was surer. But it is too late now, too many of us have achieved too much—too many degrees, too many businesses (Black women start more businesses than any other demographic), too many inventions and innovations to turn back now.
As of 2023, there were 2 million Black millionaires.
Although many attitudes and practices have continued, the Black Civil Rights Movement and the laws that it engendered brought some relief through policy. They were hard won —people suffered and died for us. The Voting Rights Act of 1965. the opening of previously all-White spaces such universities, corporations and clubs created new opportunities. My mother said that the point of integration was not sitting next to White people, but that was the only way to get the same resources. The era of supportive policies is retrenching. The modern legal Reconstruction may be coming to a close. Those doors are closing some now, but too many of our feet have gotten in those doors for them to ever close completely again.
We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Back Now
In 2013, Tim Scott became the first African American senator elected from the deep South since Reconstruction. There are 56 members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Despite persistent racism, there are now 65,000 Black lawyers (American Bars Association) and 85,000 Black engineers (National Society of Black Engineers.) Thirty-nine percent of African Americans hold higher education degrees (Equity in Higher Education). Fourteen percent hold master’s degrees (National Center for Education Statistics).
In the 1940’s almost every White person had power over almost every Black person. Other racial minorities were grandfathered in and often treated similarly. It was assumed that women were to be subordinate to men. Gay people were all but invisible. Even through hard times, those old days are gone.
In the US, we have thought of progress as linear, as marching toward one end. In light of recent retrenchments, we can see that it is not always so. We can see the latter 20th century as a second Reconstruction, when some, but not all, of the old strictures were temporarily removed. Cultures are systems and when faced with change, they will often try to get back to the old order. That attempt is happening now.
But it’s too late for that.
Now, no matter what happens, we’ve come too far and gained too much to be turned back. There’s an old gospel song by Richard Smallwood, “I’ve come too far to turn back now.” You can hear it and read the lyrics here.
Check out my new BlueSky thread where I am inviting members and allies of disinvested groups to generate a drumbeat of the accomplishments of their group members, to remember what we have accomplished, to recognize that we are all amazing. Join me with #Come too far to turn back now. I added #Black Achievement. Add your group’s hashtag too!
Sources:
American Bar Association
Equity in Higher Education
National Center for Education Statistics
National Society of Black Engineers