Could the rise of Jim Crow have been prevented?

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not what you are looking for but in a technical stance would not never ending slavery prevent the rise of jim crow
 
Perhaps gradual abolishing of slavery.

Or then let Abraham Lincoln serve full two terms or then he keeps Hamlin as VP and him becomes president after the assassination. But probably even then we see Jim Crow altough perhaps not so harsh as OTL.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
Only a radically different US could prevent Jim Crow laws. Like preventing widespread slave imports to the US in the first place.

Actually, it's fairly easy. Have Virginia vote to gradually emancipate her slaves with compensation.

This could lead to more states in the upper south doing much the same thing (Delaware also tried it at one point I believe). Either way this could lead to no civil war or a less costly one where compensated emancipation wins out, leading to a less embittered economically broken South.

This is absolutely key. Without the sense of futile bitterness white southerns felt, you'd get rid of one of the main driving forces toward Jim Crow. Will it get rid of Jim Crow entirely? Probably not (though maybe!). It'll probably still exist in limited pockets, particularly in the deep south.
 
Well...maybe a successful radical reconstruction and more aggressive integration on the part of the US Army.
 

Oceano

Banned
Here's a idea: Civil War doesn't happen, tensions keep but slavery stands.

Meanwhile, things come to a head in Brazil and Brazil has its own civil war, say, in the late 1860 or early 1870. Dom Pedro II has surviving male progeny, so he believes the empire can outlive him, and thus fights back against the slaveholders who want to depose him and his family. Possibly includes paraguayans or argentineans feeding the slavers with guns and ammo, or maybe even doing a direct intervention.

The ensuing war ends up being the brazilian equivalent of the OTL Civil War. Maybe it spirals into a general South American war. Slavery is banned when the Empíre finishes stomping revolting slave holders. Thousands hundreds or maybe even millions die.

Southern slaveholders don't want to fight that, and choose gradual emancipation with compensation.

Slavery dies a natural death.
 

jahenders

Banned
Perhaps gradual abolishing of slavery.

Or then let Abraham Lincoln serve full two terms or then he keeps Hamlin as VP and him becomes president after the assassination. But probably even then we see Jim Crow altough perhaps not so harsh as OTL.

I think either of those would help, with the latter being more likely. If Johnson (an anti-abolition Democrat) hadn't become president, things would have gone much better for blacks, especially in the South
 
Trouble is, they spent a decade on that and got nowhere. And afaics the did about as much as was politically possible.

Depends on the POD. There was a window at the end of the war where fundamental systemic changes could have been made if Radical Republican types were in charge, but if we're talking, you know, the 1868 election, the Southern military occupation is basically set to be a quagmire even with Grant's fairly decent handling ITTL
 
Depends on the POD. There was a window at the end of the war where fundamental systemic changes could have been made if Radical Republican types were in charge, but if we're talking, you know, the 1868 election, the Southern military occupation is basically set to be a quagmire even with Grant's fairly decent handling ITTL

In April 1865 there was no Radical anywhere in the Presidential line of succession. And of course if Andrew Johnson dies that triggers an election in Nov 1865 which presumably brings Grant in three years early. So effectively the 18688 election is just brought forward.
 
In April 1865 there was no Radical anywhere in the Presidential line of succession. And of course if Andrew Johnson dies that triggers an election in Nov 1865 which presumably brings Grant in three years early. So effectively the 18688 election is just brought forward.

So you'd need a 1864 POD with the war going about the same otherwise. Of course, it could butterfly Lincoln's assassination altogether.
 

scholar

Banned
Is there any way that the rise of Jim Crow could have been prevented? If so, how?
Yes, prevent the rise of the Democrats, prevent the Wilsonian Presidency, and keep the Republicans the dominant player in the South. Also helpful would be mitigating the rise of the Lost Cause, since that provided a justification for northerners disillusioned with industrial society and strong federal government to rehabilitate southern gentry as respectable in politics, who in turn tried to restore society to before the civil war.

Furthermore, getting Booker T Washington to take a preeminent position, rather than WEB Dubois, would lead to an entirely different pursuit of equality in the African American community. Washington wanted African Americans to learn trades necessary to the functioning of the state, so that in a few generations Whites would get used to the idea of Blacks as talented tradesmen capable of contributing both to gentle agricultural sciences and industrial work. Dubois demanded immediate acceptance, integration, and toleration with an inherently elite-focused cadre of the wealthiest and most educated blacks being path setters for the poorer rung of African society. This actually resulted in greater tensions in the South, as while Booker T Washington was able to get grudging toleration from Southern landholders through his careful speech and limited immediate aims, once WEB Dubois started taking over the civil rights advancement in the African American sphere, the South doubled down on Jim Crow.
 
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The Northern army only did 40 acres and a mule on a very limited basis. They didn't do it on a widespread basis like people tend to think they did.

This.

I have to wonder if you could have some kind of post-war POD with less shrewd reclaimers/veterans outright attempting insurrection or some other type of drastic move instead of IOTL weaseling their way back into the political system. Maybe a failed guerrilla war? That could certainly lead to a situation of treason convictions en masse and mass land reappropriation, which would do the trick.

The key to keeping Jim Crow out is by keeping the black people themselves and the Republicans in. Keep the reclaimers out; otherwise, it's only basically inevitable.
 
https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/carr/seaoutline.htm

Prior to any formal, governmental policy on reconstruction, General William T. Sherman created his own land redistribution policy. Sherman meet with Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, and a delegation of twenty black leaders on January 12, 1865 to address the problems of the Freedmen. After hearing that what the Freedmen desired most was their own land, he issued Special Field Order #15. This order declared that the Sea Islands on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia would be reserved for Freedman. Under this order each family would be eligible for 40 acres of land for their own cultivation [Emphasis added]. The area included the islands of Hilton Head, Port Royal, St. Helena and many other smaller islands that had been under Union control since 1861. Sherman would go on to allow Freedmen use of army mules that were were no longer fit for army service. These acts would serve as the basis for the cry of "forty acres and a mule," the basis for many Freedmen's hopes and demands later in reconstruction.
if only this became the de facto norm
 
Jim Crow was inevitable so long as the Bourbon Democrats were preserved in some property and allowed to stay in the United States. Jim Crow, the elite response to the post-Original Klan multiracial populism of the late 19th century South, was geared not just to segregation and the recreation of Calhounian white solidarity, but to ensuring that poor blacks and poor whites, sharecroppers all, were essentially prevented from voting or participating in political life.

But if the United States does what it just -- exiling or executing every last Confederate officer or major official, and all the major planter sonsofbitches -- then suddenly the South is without an elite. Sure, the place would be dominated by Yankee capital, but a new political class would have to be created, and I doubt that, in the absence of the planters, this new class would resort to such extremes in preserving their own control over the South.

Some white solidarity is, as a feature of American life, inevitable; it was the planters and the Southron rich, beaten but not broken, who won the peace, and who restored the particular forms of Calhounian Southron solidarity that have never been replicated in the North.
 
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