As many of us say good riddance to 2025 — the 160th year since we thought the Civil War ended — I think that assessment warrants reconsideration.
I say that because until this administration got its hands on the National Parks, Americans could enjoy them on its national holidays without having to pay the usual entry fees. Now, though, that’s not going to be the case for the only two holidays that specifically recognize important dates in Black history — Martin Luther King’s birthday and Juneteenth, the day former slaves in Texas finally learned they were free. If that’s not just one more lingering vestige of the white supremacy that fueled the Confederacy, I’ll eat my ACLU card.
Sure, we were all taught in school that the Civil War ended with Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, but that wasn’t true, even then. Despite that Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was the most prominent Confederate force, there was still an even larger rebel army in North Carolina that didn’t lay down its weapons until April 26. And the massive Confederate forces west of the Mississippi didn’t capitulate until May 26. And the final end of active hostilities didn’t occur until the last Confederate warship, the CSS Shenandoah, surrendered on Nov. 6.
But we’re still looking at the end much too narrowly, because if the war was being fought not only to preserve the Union but to end slavery, that didn’t happen until the 13th Amendment was ratified on Dec. 6. And if we’re talking about the assurance that freed slaves would be entitled to due process and equal protection of the law, that wasn’t on the books until the 14th Amendment was ratified in mid-1868. Even then, however, those former slaves weren’t really free until they could vote about their future lives upon ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870.
So, now we’re five years past Appomattox, but we’re just getting started, because Black Americans weren’t getting equal protection even in 1896, when the Supreme Court decided that separate but equal — which was never equal — was just fine. Then, until 1954 when the justices finally recognized that separate wasn’t equal after all, at least 4,000 known lynchings took place because of Black people trying to vote or acting “uppity” around whites.
Yet we’re still not there, because until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and for years beyond, it was apparently still alright for racist sheriffs to beat the daylights out of Black people trying to protest their treatment and for politicians to allow schools and colleges and swimming pools and theatres and lunch counters to remain segregated.
And lest you think I’m over-reacting, how about the Ku Klux Klan, the Tulsa race riot, the “Scottsboro Boys”, the murders of King, Medgar Evers, and 14-year-old Emmett Till — and now the Klan’s offspring, the Proud Boys, with all their “good people” at the massive demonstration in Charlottesville in 2017?
So here we are, 160 years after Lee and Grant, with all that history of fighting back against slavery and its despicable byproducts now just too painful for white folks to hear about. Instead, let’s sanitize our museums and memorials to avoid “divisiveness” that makes us feel bad. In fact, let’s just go pretty much full circle and restore the Confederate traitors’ names to our military installations and wipe out those free-entry National Park holidays when we might be reminded of all the “unfortunate” circumstances when we may have acted “inappropriately” toward our fellow Americans.
And since we can’t impose poll taxes or intimidate voters the way we did for eight-score years after Appomattox, let’s just rejigger our voting districts and close polling places in Black neighborhoods, so no matter how many Black Americans may want to turn out to cast their ballots, they’re going to have a harder time doing so and their votes won’t mean as much as those of white voters anyhow. And let’s count on the current Supreme Court to put its stamp of approval on all that.
Yes, we’ve made progress since Lee met Grant — people aren’t being lashed anymore for not picking enough cotton or trying to escape their masters. But if we’d known the length of the road ahead and the obstacles and indignities that would be thrown up in the years to come, there might have been less celebrating about the war’s end when Lincoln arrived at the theatre that night. We needed him then, and we could sure use him now.
L. Phillips Runyon III has practiced law in Peterborough for 50 years and was the presiding justice of the 8th Circuit Court for 27 years.