User:John Pierre Anderson/sandbox

The South Shall Rise Again!

After the American Civil War put an end to the Confederacy and the existence of slavery, the cultural adjustment of white Southerners was a traumatic and profound experience. Union troops occupied the Southern states until 1877; blacks were given right of citizenship and rose to positions o political prominence on state and national levels. In response the Night Riders organized to spread terror and violence among the black communities; they soon metamorphosed into the Ku Klux Klan and continued their campaign of racist terrorism to suppress the black population. In 1893 Plessy vs. Ferguson gave sanction to the legal fiction of "separate but equal", and another seventy years of racial oppression allowed the South time to nurture a culture based on racism and hatred.

Much detailed history has already been written on this period. Eric Fonner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 is an authoritative resource of the period. The slogan "The South Shall Rise Again" embodies this defeated white Southern cultural aspiration. Marcus Tullius Cicero is credited with the quote: "Where there's life, there's hope," and in its perverted way this sentiment is embodied by this southern slogan. In 1962, when James Meredith attempted to enroll in the University of Mississippi, the rioting and violence that ensued demonstrated the cultural intransigence of the South toward the equality and inclusion of black people in American civil life.

Will the South Rise Again? This is, in my opinion, an anachronistic non sequitur. The cultural heritage of the Southern states needs to focus on rejoining the nation at5 large, being part of the immense heritage of cultural diversity that is the hallmark of our nation.