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former planter ruling class, and, in fact, to cement rela- Scabs were beaten and taken prisoner, and even the local
tions with all classes of settlers. They openly offered police were overpowered by the armed strikers. But the
themselves as allies of the planters in return for settler ac- Afrikan U.S. Congressman Robert Smalls led the state
ceptance of the new neo-colony. But in vain.
militia in and pacified the angry workers, ending the strike.
In Mississippi when the armed planter takeover drowned
The Reconstruction politicians hoped for a the 1876 elections in a sea of blood, Afrikan U.S. Conbourgeois
democratic reconcilation, wherein the Northern gressman John Lynch (who had just lost his seat through
industrialists, they and even the former slave-masters vote fraud at gunpoint) reminded everyone to remain loyal
could all harmoniously unite to prosper off the labor of the to the Empire:
Afrikan proletariat. Beverly Nash, one of the Afrikan
leaders in the South Carolina legislature, told his people: "You certainly cannot expect.. .to resort to mob
"We recognize the Southern white man as the true friend law and brute force, or to use what may be milder
of the black man ... It is not our desire to be a discordant language, inaugurate a revolution. MY opinion is that
element in the community, or to unite the poor against the revolution is not the remedy to be applied in such cases.
rich ... The white man has the land, the black man has the Our System of government is supposed to be one of law
labor, and labor is worth nothing without capital." Nash and order ... there is patriotism enough in this country and
promised the banned ex-Confederates that he would fight sufficient love of justice and fair play in the hearts of the
to not only get their voting rights restored, but to get "our American people ..."
first men" (the former Confederate leaders) back in their
customary places in Congress and the judges' bench. This In 1876-77, the final accommodation between
desire to be accepted by the planter elite was far too com- Northern Capital and the Southern planters was reached in
mon. Henry Turner, the "most prominent" Afrikan the "Hayes-Tilden deal". The South promised to accept
politician in Georgia, opposed seizing tax-delinquent the dominance of the Northern bourgeoisie over the entire
planter estates and campaigned to free Jefferson Davis Empire, and to permit the Republican candidate Rutherfrom
prison!
ford B. Hayes to succeed Grant in the U.S Presidency. In
return, the Northern bourgeoibie agreed tu let the planters
But Reconstruction fell, its foundations eroded have regional hegemony over the South, and to withdraw
away by the ever-growing mass terror against the Afrikan the last of the occupying Union troops so that the Klan
population by settler reaction. It was militarily overthrown could take care of Afrikans as they wished. While the
by the secret planter para-military groups of the Ku Klux guarded remnants of Reconstruction held out here and
Klan, White Caps, White Cross, White Legion and so on. there for some years (Afrikan Congressmen were elected
In town after town, county and parish one after another, from the South until 1895), the critical year of 1877 markthen
in state after state, Reconstruction was broken in ed their conclusive defeat.
bloody killings.
During these fateful years, when the central
During the 1868 elections in Louisiana, for exam- political issue in the Empire was the war in the Afrikan colple,
some 2,000 Afrikans were thought to have been killed ony, the white labor movement lined up on the side of the
or wounded, with many more forced to flee. In Shreveport KKK terror - and against the Afrikan masses. Even the
a gang of Italian fishermen and market venders called neo-colonial society of Black Reconstruction was hated by
"The Innocents" roamed the streets for ten days before white labor, since it involved giving Afrikans at least an
the elections, literally killing every Afrikan they could outward form of democratic rights and government
find. Some 297 Afrikans were murdered in New Orleans. power. Even nee-colonialism was too good for Afrikans in
In Bossier Parish "One hundred and twenty corpses were the opinion of white labor.
found in the woods or were taken out of the Red River
after a 'Negro' hunt ..." Although it took ten years for Some may consider it unusual that white workers
Reconstruction to be finally defeated (and another twenty opposed Black Reconstruction; particularly since Black
years before its advances were all erased), the guerrilla war Reconstruction not only bent over backwards to treat the
between planter and Afrikan forces was disastrously one- entire white community, from planters to Poor whites,
sided. The war could only have had one end, since with great respect, but introduced social reforms which
Afrikans were disarmed militarily and politically. gave a real boost upwards to poor whites. Poor whites
were able to send their children to the new public schools,
By 1874 only four states-Mississippi, Louisiana, and for the first time in much of the South they were able
South Carolina, and Florida-still remained in the hands to vote and hold minor public offices (during the "Slave
of Reconstruction. The end was in sight. Secret con- Power" reign stiff property qualifications barred many
ferences of the planter leadership mapped out the final whites from having political rights). These gifts failed to
drive to tear out the heart of Black Reconstruction, and to win the gratitude of poor whites.
begin the long, hundred-year night of absolute, terroristic
rule. The White League was organized as the armed united Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw that the
front of the KKK and all the other planter organizations. "mean whites" (as they called them) of the South were
Within months it had 40,000 members. The white violence hopeless politically. They felt that nothing could be done
intensified.
with them but to render them powerless until they died out
of old age. This was not a unique observation. Wendell
Even at this late date the Afrikan petit-bourgeois Phillips, the great Radical abolitionist, bluntly pleaded in
leaders of Reconstruction remained true to their loyalty 1870: "Now is the time.. .to guarantee the South against
to the Empire. In 1876 there was a militant strike wave the possible domination or the anger of the white race. We
among the Afrikan plantation laborers in South Carolina. 41 adhere to our opinion that nothing, or not much, except