"Ain't no money in the world can get me on my feet before we hit Memphis! And if I never see a
bale of cotton no more in life, that'll be too soon."
At
Those Who Can See, we recently postulated that
in
a Euro society, Afros on average need stronger social controls than
other groups in order to conform to Euro behavioral norms. Where
these controls are tightest, such as a slavery system, black criminality
will be lowest; and where such controls are loosest, black criminality
will be very high. We also hypothesized that
when a new freedom or right is obtained by Afros, a statistically significant percentage of them will 'act out' in response, in ways that include antisocial and criminal behavior.
We suggested four such periods in U.S. history in which to test our hypothesis:
(1) the Reconstruction South in the years after Emancipation
(2) Northern cities absorbing waves of southern Blacks fleeing Jim Crow during the 'Great Migration' (1910-1950)
(3) the post Civil Rights-era U.S. of the 1960s and 1970s
(4) the period following Barack Obama's inauguration as first Afro president of the U.S.
Last time,
we examined (2),
the change in crime statistics before and after the Civil Rights era of
the 1960s. Today, we shall look at period (1), the South
post-Emancipation.
This is the most delicate of
questions, as human bondage, while common throughout history, is seen
with strong revulsion today in the West. Is it to be expected that he
who moves from slavery to freedom will lash out in violence at his past
oppressors? The more optimistic writers of the time, Black as well as
White, believed the freed slave would quickly use his liberty to educate
himself and lead a productive, civilized existence alongside 'the
superior race.' The more pessimistic thought emancipation of Afros
could only lead to chaos.
Who was right?
Empirical
data on the question is tricky to come by, for a variety of reasons.
And it is important to distinguish Reconstruction from the period
following it. The years 1865-1876 were topsy-turvy for all the South,
under military occupation and with illiterate Afros being shoehorned by
the occupiers into State Houses and judgeships. Things didn't return to
'normal' until the late 1870s, and the men quoted below are mainly
referring to the period beginning then. We shall start with their
observations, then move on to the statistics.
I. Anti-social behavior after Reconstruction: Anecdotes
1) A general increase in crime
Post-Reconstruction
era writings are rife with anecdotes of high black crime, from both
Southern authors and visitors to the South.
W.E.B. DuBois, 1899:
Throughout the land there has been
since the war [between the states] a large increase in crime, especially
in cities. ... The Negro began to rush to the cities in large numbers
after 1880, and consequently the phenomena attendant on that momentous
change of life are tardier in his case. His rate of criminality has in
the last two decades risen rapidly...(1)