Rev. Robert L. Montgomery
I’m reading “The Tyranny of the Minority” (2023) by Harvard University professors Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Through it all, I realized that America has experienced not just one, but a series of separate “beginnings.” We are familiar with the first “beginning” of the United States of America through its revolution against Great Britain. However, it should be recognized that there have been other important “beginnings” since then.
Indeed, an important beginning occurred with the Civil War, when the Emancipation Proclamation freed a large portion of the population to become U.S. citizens. This was literally a restoration of the freedoms enjoyed by the nation and African Americans, who were already important to the nation’s economy, including numerous construction projects and government buildings. America was already a multi-ethnic and multi-racial society from its founding.
The Civil War was followed by the Reconstruction era, in which white residents of southern states that were part of the Confederacy were given freedom to reassert white control over their former slaves. The most precious part of democracy, the right to elect representatives to local and national government, was denied to former slaves in a variety of ways. Their content ranges from making unrealistic demands to black voters, such as reciting lengthy passages from the founding documents, to violence against those who try to vote.
Direct racial segregation laws (Jim Crow laws) were passed to explicitly oppress black people by making them second-class citizens. The various effects of legalized racial segregation and acts of violence and intimidation created a caste society in which black people were seen as subordinate citizens, unworthy and unqualified to participate actively in government. . Women were not considered to have the right to vote, so they were not a fully integrated nation. A new beginning for this country awaited women in 1919, when they were given the right to vote after World War I. This came about only after a long struggle by women that began in the 19th century.
After World War II, a new beginning occurred, and court decisions culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Until then, the black population had not fully participated in American democracy. Adolf Hitler himself praised the United States for enacting laws that excluded sections of the population from full participation. The trial-based new start was supported by Democrats and Republicans. I distinctly remember the 1950s and her 1960s, when America built on the civil rights movement and took steps to create a more egalitarian, multiracial, multiracial society. Although there was no actual Civil War, there was significant violence and death.
Although the white population strongly supported the revolution against the British, it has been a major obstacle in the new beginning that would influence America to become more fully multiracial and multiracial. The Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln ushered in a new beginning sparked by the Civil War. But women struggled almost alone to spark a new beginning in winning the vote. The new beginning sparked by the civil rights movement was supported by Republicans and liberal Democrats. However, Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) and other conservatives strongly opposed it.
Now, the Republican Party has completely reversed itself with the addition of some former Southern Democrats. They rejected efforts to reinstate the Voting Rights Act in 2021. A powerful Republican senator, Mike Lee of Utah, questioned democracy itself. The Republican Party became the “de facto white party” in reaction to the multiracial democracy it helped create. Evangelical Christians, who are concentrated in the South and rural areas, have been drawn toward the illiberal Republican Party and its far right by President Trump, while the Democratic Party has embraced multiracialism, including strong support for labor unions and unions. and is a strong supporter of liberal democracy. Women’s reproductive rights.
I would like to remind my fellow Christians that Christianity is based on God’s love for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. The Church itself and all religions had to struggle to achieve this goal. Christianity and America should follow this same path and continue a new beginning that brings more justice and equal rights to all citizens. New beginnings in our past serve as models of possibility for us and the world.
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The Rev. Dr. Robert L. Montgomery lives in Black Mountain.
