When did the Anti-Civil Rights Movement Begin?

Narrative Internal Enforcement by Rationalization

White Pro-Civil Rights Activists Finally Show Up in Tennessee Statehouse 2026 [I know, it looks staged with mostly just white people in Tennessee protesting for black districts in this picture, but it’s not true as they are just joining ]

I. Black Agency Recognition

How do black movements happen? Do they have to lead to success to be considered successful? In the national American narrative, it always involves some white support and a white person signing a bill at the end, as with the last of the 4 Civil Rights Bills in the 1950s and 1960s. Also, as another rule of thumb, there has to be some sort of unification of the white liberal (the “northerners”) with the deeply white conservatives (the white “Southerners”) coming to a consensus.

Otherwise, we have a black movement appearing on its own, with white Southerners acting against it, and the tale ends with those white politicians and their police forces, along with the supermajority state legislatures, blocking democracy. So, the frame has to be white-approved and end in some benevolent form of white agreement to make it into the official American history. Otherwise, it’s not an American narrative.

The white approval ends in a truce. Black Americans sometimes appear to win something when “Southern” whites yield. But what did those white conservatives really yield? Not the fight against taking away Black rights and targeting them. They continued that fight in legislative bodies.

If we denationalize this “white unified narrative” that is accepted and constantly negotiated, and look at the state level, we expose truths that whites can’t unify around to accept. Why? Because what is exposed in white conservative defiance against democracy and white heroism reveals that what is normative is white male politicians and their allies, who are in constant defiance of the Constitution and the foundational principle of “certain unalienable rights.”

That’s why I chose to focus on the Southern states. Many white men in politics and business have consistently defied the concept of unalienable rights, particularly the right to vote and the right to work for oneself, since the mid-1650s in the Southern states. While Northern states did have such onerous slave laws, they began to move in the opposite direction, dismantling that institution decade by decade in the 1700s, resisting it, and not segregating the vote.

II. Back –Way Back– to Basics of Democracy

A political movement is decades-long and overcomes resistance from unyielding political power, including the legislative and executive branches in states. It took even longer to formulate the “correct” principle of a “full democracy,” centuries. The Magna Carta established the principle of partial democracy, giving citizens (“subjects” of the Anglo-Saxon monarch) a voice in government that offset the monarch’s authoritarian instinct to arbitrarily make and enforce laws at will and to judge and execute people.

What we don’t see is the struggle to reach a functioning, practicing “partial democracy” from that point onward. The Monarch established the British States of America, or BSofA, when the Monarch formerly took over Virginia in 1624, subjecting its legislative body of elected officials who could make laws. Thus, in the story of how America was formed, it was a continuation of the representative democracy already in place, expanding it.

Laws of voting, made on a state-by-state basis, each law that passed was assented to by the monarch (or his representative in the state) under the same system in Parliament in mainland Britain. Those elected officials for roughly 160 years before the American Revolution broke out retained the underlying principle of who could vote: those who paid taxes on their land could vote, one per household. There was no “racism” in these voting laws that developed.

Only in 1699 do we see a majority of legislators vote to pass a law to disenfranchise voting rights from negro women, a new class of voters or nonvoters. Disenfranchisement of negros was not “natural” and had to be fought for. You can call it the “reverse civil rights movement.” And it was a political movement. In 1714 in South Carolina, a majority of elected officials created a law and successfully pushed it through to disenfranchise “negro male” landowners (or freeholders, as they were called, a non-racial term we have only retroactively made racial) by creating a class of “white male” landowners who could vote after paying taxes.

This was the first time a class of “white male” was made “supreme” in the state, locking in their white male political power. Ten years later, this movement continued, and in 1724, the North Carolina legislature passed its anti-negro voting rights bill, stripping the ballot from Black Americans who had been paying taxes and voting. In 1734, Virginia finally pushed through its bill, overcoming opposition as a majority of white male legislators voted to strip the vote from Black men.

What we know next is that the laws in Virginia were overturned sometime before 1660, under Monarch George the First, through petition. When George the Third took power in 1660, a monarch not benevolent, the Virginia legislators made a new law again taking away voting rights from negroes. By 1770, only three states had stripped away voting rights from negroes, a total of five times.

That is an anti-civil-rights (or unalienable-rights) movement, and its roots run deep and are largely ignored by scholars, for obvious reasons. It puts white conservatives, pro-slavery Americans in those states, in a bad light. That is as it should be, though, not because we want to degrade them or turn some whites into heroes and others into villains. This is not a cartoon, but real life. But it is critical to understand that this division has deep roots, which white Americans refuse to recognize, and that tree was never chopped down. Instead, it flourished through narrative neglect, by hiding it, largely after the Civil War.

III. A Foundation is Just a Start

Thus, the culmination of the founders, as a group in the American Philosophical Society, deliberately articulated the principle of “a full democracy” on July 4th, 1776. When we take the long view of history, we can see that the Magna Carta was a principle that took hundreds of years to be put into practice, establishing a form of “partial democracy” (I prefer “partial autocracy,” but whatever for now).

That expansion of voting rights continued through struggle and resistance within the autocratic monarchical system, as new classes, once disenfranchised, were admitted to the inner circle. Thus, the barons, the first group to be elected to Parliament when it was created around 1265 AD, became entrenched over time, and centuries later, they became the House of Lords. The “new” richer merchant class and the segregated, repressed religious class (the Puritans, also called the Separatists) struggled to gain more representation in government, with resentment after the Acts of Supremacy in 1534 and 1558, which created the British Anglican Church. The Acts separated the church from the Catholic Church, causing political disruption by naming the Monarch the Head of the Anglican Church, thereby removing the Pope from power over Britain, who had the right to collect a 10% tax.

The alienation of “certain rights” meant the loss of political power, and that was at the heart of what was not tolerated. The Declaration of Independence was a way to put an end to the back-and-forth and constant alienation over voting rights and to work toward greater political stability.

But that doesn’t mean this concept, established for the first time in history, ended conflict, especially for Black Americans, and for poor whites and other minorities who came to America. Like the Magna Carta, I believe now, in hindsight, it was the start of a long slog toward practicing “a full democracy,” toward instantiating it. Getting it on paper and agreeing to it as the foundation of government was the achievement, not putting it into practice.

The Magna Carta was constantly resisted, with the monarch overturning habeas corpus rights. It is largely considered one of the keystones of democracy, as it protects citizens from arbitrary arrest, imprisonment without charges, and the denial of legal representation and a phone call to one’s family (there were no phones, but you get the underlying point).

But, the Monarch suspended habeas corpus three times in England for extended periods in the mid-1790s to jail opposition groups. Yes, it sounds exactly like anti-fa, cointel, Black Identity Extremists, etc. A government’s arbitrary jailing of political opposition to its autocratic regime happens today elsewhere, in North Korea, Russia, and Israel’s jailing of Palestinians, etc.

It’s nothing new. However, it indicates that a “full democracy” is definitely not being practiced, no matter what a regime calls itself. It reminds us that the guardrails for a “full democracy” are not in place. Of course, like our current government, those governments would also protest, claiming they are democracies or whatever. They would not call themselves “dictatorships” or “despots.”

That is why we cannot trust what governments call themselves. We must have clear measurement standards in place to understand how a government acts to take away “certain unalienable rights” of its citizens — all its citizens born or naturalized there, no matter their color, shape, or ethnicity. We must look at each instance of alienation of rights, and at mass instances, to see whether it is one and how many people it is affecting.

But remember, the standard for achieving a full democracy is zero. When the government takes away rights from zero citizens, it has achieved that one measure in one state or one county toward a full democracy. We are a long way from that, and “we” have been moving backward since the anti-civil rights movement began, and “they” keep moving forward.

IV. What’s the Black Point Here?

To paraphrase Fredrick Douglass, Power concedes nothing, and it never will. The disenfranchised Black American experienced alienation of political power in certain states.

There is a difference between having the right to vote and white people blocking Black Americans from using it. What does it mean in terms of black American history? It means you can’t just repeat the long arc of history bends towards justice, but must actively recognize how it bends and who is bending it the other way. Black Americans may have the moral upper hand, but they still don’t control the narrative of history. To understand their quest for democracy (minus the Tim Scott-like house servants), you have to say and speak of the white conservative political quest against democracy.

History erasure is a powerful phenomenon or device, and it occurs because, according to my latest hypothesis (and my latest term, history erasure, which is just a placeholder rather than buried history), white civil rights Republicans after the Civil War tried to be correct and protect the voting rights of Black Americans (mainly those who voted Republican) but failed, and after 30 years, by the turn of the century, they gave up politically at the federal level. And because they continually fight their anti-civil rights narrative, making it positive.

This general, unified white narrative grew and took over through forceful erosion at the state and national levels, making Americans seem united as a nation. It became more erased in the 20th century. What Trump is doing, when this narrative is restored, is technically “nothing new.” He is only openly embodying the last 130 years of white work to eradicate and repress Black voting rights and to eliminate the narrative of Black actions and pro-civil rights activism that worked to stop and reverse the white conservative anti-civil rights movement.

V. Back to the Well(s)

In fact, when considering America on a state-by-state basis, we can see that in every decade, Black Americans were fighting for their civil rights. In some states, they were succeeding, and in others, they were failing. The failure is what actually exposes why there is this “deep narrative erasure.”

Conforming to this national white narrative means eliminating the constant Black American success in activism and the deep-seated block of white conservative Americans, most strongly in the Southeast. What I mean is that we don’t choose to say, Black women did vote in 1920. We nationally choose to say Black women didn’t vote and believe that. That means there is vast ignorance among most white people and “new” first- and second-generation immigrants that Black women started voting in the 1920s and became politically influential. Black men voted in every decade after the Civil War and ran for office in every decade thereafter.

Case in point: Ida B. Wells helped coordinate the Alpha Suffrage Club, where Black women organized to promote suffrage after the 19th Amendment’s ratification. They went door-to-door registering Black women (and perhaps Black men) to vote, and their efforts expressed political agency that directly influenced the election of Oscar DePriest, a Black Republican and civil rights activist, to the city council.

Here’s what Wikipedia tells us:

“Ida B. Wells, the Alpha Suffrage Club was the nation’s first Black women’s club focused specifically on the franchise. After the ratification of the 19th Amendment, club members went block-by-block to register Black women to vote, directly impacting local elections and helping to elect Oscar DePriest to the city council.”

DePriest’s political clout and strength were amplified by this “black victory,” and he felt obligated to represent their concerns on the council. Black women who asserted their newfound rights made a difference. They, along with black men and other whites in that district, helped ignite the 20th-century “civil rights” movement by inspiring others to act.

When he became the first Black American elected to Congress in 1928, he represented their concerns in Congress as a Black Republican. That is the factual narrative that demonstrates the power of the people and of Black Americans in a democracy, and he served for 6 years until he lost to another Black man in 1934.

What we see, if we choose to use this as our starting point for the 20th-century civil rights movement, is a narrative shaped by the actions of Black American women as they assert their rights and build a voting network to achieve success.

In the South, we again see activist Black Americans moving to fight for their rights. Again, I refer to Wikipedia as a neutral source, but I first read about it elsewhere, and it appears in other sources:

“In response to this blatant disenfranchisement, the NAACP — assisted by Butler Nance, the first NAACP lawyer to bring a case in South Carolina — filed a lawsuit on behalf of the 32 women against the local registrar. This served as a vital early legal battle in the state designed to compel local officials to enforce the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments.”

However, this example shows us not a victory for these Black women, but a victory for the white conservative men (back then in the Democratic Party). This reinforces the white narrative of anti-civil rights, which should be most prominent. Here we find that Black Americans again can’t overcome the resistance in the system the way that Ida and company did up in Chicago.

The nation is still split. One “half” continues to repress Black Americans in the Southeastern states, while outside that region Black Americans are voting, both men and women. Again, even though by 1920 about 89 percent of Black Americans lived in the Southeast, the population had grown numerically, thereby increasing outside the Southeast as well.

But it is not the number of Black voters that matters, but the actions of white conservatives to block and repress Black American voters, or simply to strip away their rights. While gerrymandering is bad and indeed obviously racist, it does not take away or directly alienate a person’s voting rights, “only” watering down Black representation, which is often affiliated with the Democratic Party.

VI. The Four Seasons of Freedom Summer

It is worth fighting against this gerrymandering, of course. I do consider it “cheating” and a barrier to Black representation. The current Freedom Summer movement is great. But it is not something that should ever have stopped. When Black Americans are made to feel triumphant, as if they finally “won” their rights (from repressive white conservative politicians in office and out of office), then you know the white deception is working.

We still have about 5 million American citizens whose rights are alienated or stripped away. White conservatives have fought for the last 6 decades to pass more disenfranchisement laws, not fewer. While the white anti-civil rights movement “only” stripped voting rights from Black Americans in 3 states by 1770 (technically, they were Black British subjects), by 2001, 48 states saw this conservative anti-civil rights movement expand and actively win.

They win because whites, especially but not only, now believe that “criminals” should lose their right to vote. While they have this belief pounded into their heads and, worse, into their hearts by the excessive national white fear-mongering in the age of mass incarceration, starting around 1980 with the “crack epidemic,” it is anathema to a “full democracy.”

The number to aim for is zero. Every American gets to vote, even while in jail after being duly convicted of a crime, which now happens in only two states and the District of Columbia, the nation’s capital. If it wasn’t a problem for them to vote in jail for the past 220 years plus, why is it now? How do you justify this expansion of anti-civil rights?

When we don’t take the long view of history, going back to 1600 or even to the Magna Carta, we miss the hard development and the oppositional forces always at play against democracy. Yes, it happens in other countries. But no other country ever starts off with some states moving in the right direction toward full democracy, only to slide backward away from it.

Everyone, not just Black Americans, who cares about achieving a “full democracy” should continually fight for it with their voice and their right to protest, and use the “right” narratives that show the long division in British America and the United States of America that has never stopped.

To paraphrase what Dr. Nikole Hannah-Jones said in The 1619 Project, Black Americans are the perfectioners of democracy. This is because of their agency and demands, as they recognize their repression from being targeted the most, nonstop. While this white conservative anti-civil rights movement (pro-Christian nationalism) has obsessively focused on Black Americans the longest and has taken successful state legislative actions, it is not the only white target. White anti-civil rights movement activists have targeted Latinos, along with LGBTQ, Muslim Americans, and others.

They fought and won a fifty-year legal battle to strip women of the right to necessary abortions and to allow them up to three months without question. The Hodges SCOTUS decision was the product of decades of organized attacks against women’s bodies, and women did nothing in Congress to pass a basic abortion rights act, as they did in 1967 in the UK. But this successful white conservative campaign against a Women’s Abortion Act stems from narrative blindness among blacks, liberals, and even stupid conservative white women who support their men in taking away their bodily rights.

Trying to be united in practice under the “correct” ideal principle was never going to be easy. But the problem is not recognizing the resistance to it, by those in power who seek to expand it and continually take it from others, particularly minorities, who keep power through violence, murder, voter-repression laws, gerrymandering, and other techniques.

America has never been United in practice. Without narratively recognizing and naming the white conservative political resistance movement that sees Trump as their natural extension of their struggle for over 300 years, we can’t defeat it. The Anti-Civil Rights Movement will be here to stay.