Bourbonism, Oligarchy and the Roots of Racism
King #1
**The Bourbon Democrats rise again? - Colbert I. King, April 20, 2012 The Washington Post\ **
The parallels between today's conservative-dominated Republican Party and southern "Bourbon" Democrats in the post-Civil War era are striking and ominous.
The Bourbons --- as conservative Democrats in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were known --- were prosperous property owners in the South who set out to end Reconstruction and bring back the good old days of domination by upper-class whites.
Historian Harvey H. Jackson III captured the objectives of the Bourbons in a 2004 article:
"Among their many goals was to keep Bourbon money in Bourbon pockets. They limited the state's taxing power, abolished boards and offices (including the board of education), allowed the state debt to be settled in ways not fully understood today, and prohibited state support for projects such as river improvement and railroad construction." Any of that sound familiar?
Continuing: "The Bourbon [Democratic-written] constitution of 1875 was a victory for prosperous . . . Alabamians who did not want to pay taxes to improve the lives of those less fortunate than themselves and who did not want to finance commercial development that did not benefit them directly." What contemporary political party comes to mind?\ Read the whole thing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bourbon-democrats-rise-again/2012/04/20/gIQA9cvXWT_story.html?
King #2
Martin Luther King "Selma Speech," 25 March 1965, Montgomery, Alabama.
Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.
Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. (Listen to him) That is what was known as the Populist Movement. (Speak, sir) The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses (Yes, sir) and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses (Yeah) into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.
To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. (Right) I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, (Yes) thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. (Yes, sir) And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.
If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)
Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike (Uh huh) resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; (Yes, sir) they segregated southern churches from Christianity (Yes, sir); they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; (Yes, sir) and they segregated the Negro from everything. (Yes, sir) That's what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality. (Yes, sir)
Read the whole thing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bourbon-democrats-rise-again/2012/04/20/gIQA9cvXWT_story.html?
Oligarchy 3
From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction by Forrest A. Nabors
The rise of Southern oligarchy hangs over events in American political, constitutional, and social history like a colossus. . . The ultimate goal of the Republican Party, the war, and Reconstruction was the same, to preserve and advance republicanism as the American founders understood it and wished it to be advanced, against its natural, existential enemy, oligarchy.That goal was inseparable from the goal of abolition and was inseparable from the goal of equal citizenship, because the principle of natural equality justified American republicanism and required the ultimate extinction of slavery and required equal citizenship.
The idea that the effect of slavery warps republican societies into oligarchic political societies is as old as the American founding. For this reason, and to protect the republican regime that they were trying establish, the founders spoke and acted against slavery.