The Color Line

            A long procrastinated reading of W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk has been enlightening; some unsorted tiles in my mental historical mosaic fell into a kind of shape. Emancipation and the Union victory mobilized white supremacists somewhat, but when the Freedmen’s Bureau fell apart, despite good work in the face of profound resistance and some corruption, and the need for Negro suffrage became even clearer, the Fifteenth Amendment was the real energizing event for white supremacists in the years between the Civil War and Du Bois’s book in 1903. Vote suppression. Du Bois confidently announced that “The problem of the twentieth century is the color line” and had no reason to back away from that statement in all the many subsequent editions of his book during the first half of the century. I wasn’t around for developments in the 20s, 30s and 40s, but I was a witness to the two events of mid-century, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act, which prompted reactions that are still very much with us. But it wasn’t until this century (“The problem of the twenty-first century is the color line”) that a black man was elected President, and the reaction among many whites has been that, illogically, he caused the ruin of the country that then allowed him to be elected. What’s the answer, Night Riders being out of fashion and all? Well, how about vote suppression, but more subtle this time, and in the name of patriotism (which Dr. Johnson called the last refuge of scoundrels)?