White supremacy in the United States traces to the origins of the country, and is closely associated with ideas of white nationalism. It is strongly linked to slavery in the United States, almost exclusively practiced by European colonists and White Americans enslaving other races, primarily African Americans. Enslavement of Africans intensified in the 1650s, reaching a population of four million prior to its abolition in 1865. After a brief liberalization in the Reconstruction era, white supremacy was largely restored by the Jim Crow laws, establishing racial segregation in the South, while the urban Black population in the North experienced institutional racism including racial wealth inequality. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s largely ended de jure segregation, but extensive de facto racism remained.
Slavery as an institution dates to the colonial period preceding the United States. Prior to the 1650s, the British Thirteen Colonies primarily enslaved Native Americans. After Native Americans suffered massive population losses from the importation of diseases from the Old World, Europeans began importing enslaved African people. The use of enslaved Africans in industrialized agriculture, that had developed in the Caribbean at the time, spread to the Colonial South. The ruling white planter class was disturbed by the 1675–1676 Bacon's Rebellion, which saw the European indentured servants unite with all classes of Africans. In response the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 were enacted, socially segregated white colonists from black enslaved persons.
The Constitution of the United States emerged as a compromise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the North and South respectively. The planter class's harshness was worsened by the Haitian Revolution and massacre. Pseudoscientific beliefs were used to attempt to justify slavery in the 19th century. Contradiction between the First Industrial Revolution within the Northern United States and the agrarian plantation economy of the South, which was more predicated on white supremacy, led to conflict, beginning with the Bleeding Kansas confrontations and evolving into the American Civil War. During this war, President Abraham Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the South. The postwar Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for crime, the Fourteenth Amendment extended citizenship to all Africans born in the US, and the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination in the right to vote.
After a brief liberalization in the Reconstruction era, the Democratic Party largely restored white supremacy via the Jim Crow laws, establishing racial segregation in the South. The urban Black population in the North following the Great Migration was targeted with violence, exclusionary housing, redlining and racial steering. The analogous Juan Crow system and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act reflected white supremacy over Mexican Americans and Chinese Americans. The nadir of American race relations in the decades following Reconstruction's failure saw the Ku Klux Klan lead white mobs in lynchings and racial massacres.
History
Early history White supremacy was dominant in the United States both before and after the American Civil War, and it persisted for decades after the Reconstruction Era. The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 socially segregated white colonists from black enslaved persons, making them disparate groups and hindering their ability to unite. Unity of the commoners was a perceived fear of the Virginia aristocracy, who wished to prevent repeated events such as Bacon's Rebellion, occurring 29 years prior. Prior to the Civil War, many wealthy white Americans owned slaves; they tried to justify their economic exploitation of black people by creating a "scientific" theory of white superiority and black inferiority. One such slave owner, future president Thomas Jefferson, wrote in 1785 that blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind."Paul Finkelman (November 12, 2012). "The Monster of Monticello" . The New York Times. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 provided the first rules to be followed by the United States government in granting national citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 () limited U.S. citizenship and naturalization to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good moral character". In some parts of the United States, many people who were considered non-white were disenfranchised, barred from government office, and prevented from holding most government jobs well into the second half of the 20th century. Professor Leland T. Saito of the University of Southern California writes: "Throughout the history of the United States, race has been used by whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion."Leland T. Saito (1998). "Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb". p. 154. University of Illinois Press
In the antebellum South, four million slaves were denied freedom. In a 4 January 1848 speech to the Senate regarding the issue of whether or not to annex the entirety of Mexico after the Mexican-American war, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina said, "I know further, sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race." In 1856, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that free blacks descended from slaves could not hold United States citizenship even if they had been born in the country.
The outbreak of the Civil War saw the desire to uphold white supremacy being cited as a cause for state secessionA Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union : "We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable. That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states." and the formation of the Confederate States of America.The controversial "Cornerstone Speech", Alexander H. Stephens (Vice President of the Confederate States), March 21, 1861, Savannah, Georgia : "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition."
Post-Civil War era Major changes in this racial requirement for US citizenship were not made until the years which followed the American Civil War. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed to grant birthright citizenship to black people born in the US, but it specifically excluded untaxed Indians, because they were separate nations. However, citizenship for other non-whites born in the US was not settled until 1898 with United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, which concluded with an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This racial definition of American citizenship has had consequences for perceptions of American identity. Pdf.
In an 1890 editorial about Native Americans and the American Indian Wars, author L. Frank Baum wrote: "The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians." Full text of both, with commentary by professor A. Waller Hastings
KKK Following the defeat of the Confederate States of America and the abolition of slavery in the United States at the end of the American Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded as an insurgent group with the goal of maintaining the Southern racial system throughout the Reconstruction Era. The creation of this group was able to instill fear in African Americans while, in some cases, filling white Americans with pride in their race and reassurance in the fact that they will stay 'on top'. The message they gave to people around them was that, even though the Confederate States did not exist anymore, the same principle remained in their minds: whites were superior. Although the first incarnation of the KKK was focused on maintaining the Antebellum South, its second incarnation in the 1915-1940s period was much more oriented towards white nationalism and American nativism, with slogans such as "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and "America for Americans", in which "Americans" were understood to be white and Protestant. The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation is an example of an allegorical invocation of white nationalism during this time, and its positive portrayal of the first KKK is considered to be one of the factors which led to the emergence of the second KKK.In its darkness, 'Kong' shows the human heart. Newsday (New York: 15 December 2005)
The second KKK was founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1915 and, starting in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of recruiting. The organization grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions of urban industrialization and vastly increased immigration, its membership grew most rapidly in cities and spread out of the South to the Midwest and West. The second KKK called for strict morality and better enforcement of prohibition. Its rhetoric promoted anti-Catholicism and nativism.Pegram, Thomas R., One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s (2011), pp. 47–88. Some local groups took part in attacks on private houses and carried out other violent activities. The violent episodes were generally in the South.Jackson, Kenneth T., The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 (Oxford University Press, 1967; 1992 edition).
The second KKK was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4 to 5 million men. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It faded away in the 1940s.Lay, Shawn. "Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century", The New Georgia Encyclopedia (Coker College).
Later 20th century