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UNPUNISHED MURDER

Page history last edited by RichiesPicks 6 years ago

28 March 2018 UNPUNISHED MURDER: MASSACRE AT COLFAX AND THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE by Lawrence Goldstone, Scholastic Focus, September 2018, 288p., ISBN: 978-1-338-23945-4

 

“...it now appears that not a single colored man was killed until all of them had surrendered to the whites...when over 100 of the unfortunate negroes were brutally shot down in cold blood. It is understood that another lot of negroes was burned to death in the Court-house when it was set on fire.”

--front page of The New York Times, April 17, 1873

 

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

--from the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

 

Nominally, UNPUNISHED MURDER is a piece of narrative nonfiction for tweens and teens about a little-known massacre of a hundred and fifty black people in Louisiana in 1873. Despite an ensuing court case going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, those responsible for the slaughter were not punished.

 

Of course, one could fill a library with books about all the atrocities perpetrated or condoned by the federal and state governments over the course of American history.

 

More importantly, UNPUNISHED MURDER is an overview of U.S. Constitutional history through the country’s first century, an exploration of figures and events that led to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and a recounting of how  this amendment was eviscerated for generations through atrocious Supreme Court decisions.

 

If you’ve studied the modern civil rights movement and observed the racial discrimination that still exists today in America, you might wonder how the Fourteenth Amendment ever got ratified. You might wonder why, 150 years later, there are still battles over providing the protections of this amendment to all Americans.

 

The Fourteenth Amendment became part of the law of the land against the wishes of southern white supremacists who had recently fought a war for “states rights” (a.k.a. slavery). To understand how the federal government successfully forced ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment is to recognize that a large portion of white America never accepted the equality of black people and white people. Generation after generation, southern whites have devised strategies to ensure continued unequal treatment of black citizens.

 

That tradition began as soon as slaves were emancipated. Black Codes, legislated by southern states at the end of the Civil War, legalized racism and segregation. Racist southerner Andrew Johnson from Tennessee, who became president upon President Lincoln’s assassination, favored letting the defeated states do what they wanted.

 

But President Johnson soon had to battle with a group of congressmen, dubbed the Radical Republicans, who were determined to provide truly equal rights to the newly-freed slaves. The centerpiece of their work was the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

 

Enactment of constitutional amendments requires ratification by three-fourths of the states. How could the Radical Republicans get the racist state governments of the South to ratify the amendment?

 

“Radicals came up with a workable--and likely illegal--solution. Confederate states would only be allowed to rejoin the Union if they ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. All that was left was to make sure that governments of those states would be willing to agree to an amendment that ensured equal rights and, almost certainly, gave African-American men the ability to vote. Equally important for the Radicals, the congressmen who would be seated from the readmitted South must be willing to vote to support their program for Reconstruction, which white supremacist state legislatures surely would not. And they did not. Of all the secessionist states, only Tennessee voted to ratify the amendment--which must have infuriated Andrew Johnson. The solution was clear. If one could not persuade sitting governments to accept the amendment, it would be necessary to change the governments.”

 

This change of governments was accomplished through Congressional enactment of statutes by which federal troops were sent into the Confederate states. The military oversaw the registering of black men to vote and oversaw the denial of voting rights to rebels--white men who fought for the South. This led to the election of Republican-majority state legislatures in the rebel states. These new legislatures ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.

 

UNPUNISHED MURDER is overflowing with fascinating historical detail. For instance, I learned as a child that in the 1876 presidential election, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. What they didn’t teach us is that Tilden won the popular vote due to intimidation against southern blacks; that a stalemate developed between the parties; and that the stalemate was resolved through a compromise. The compromise stipulated that Hayes would become president in exchange for the effective end of Reconstruction.  Republicans pulled federal troops out of the south, which led to the abuse and intimidation of southern blacks, and to the maltreatment of generations of their descendents.

 

There is much to learn, ponder, and debate in this well-researched, well-crafted read!

 

UNPUBLISHED MURDER is a debut title in Scholastic’s new Focus imprint. Focus will publish narrative nonfiction for tweens and teens that encourages readers to “draw connections between historical events and contemporary issues.” I look forward to the rest of their maiden list.

 

UNPUNISHED MURDER is a must-have for middle schools and high schools.

 

Richie Partington, MLIS

Richie's Pickshttp://richiespicks.pbworks.com

https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/

richiepartington@gmail.com

 

 

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