July 1, 2026 E-Alert. Click here to view the e-alert in your browser.
As I contemplate the United States on its 250th Anniversary, I think about our history and our future and the aspirations of our democracy.
I am compelled to talk first about the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, starting just 71 years after all 13 original colonies ratified the Constitution in 1790 and formed the United States. It appeared that this nation might be very short-lived.
What issue was so significant that it almost destroyed the nation? Defense of slavery by the southern states was the central reason for the Civil War. The “Ordinance of Secession” cited fears that slavery would be abolished as justification for secession. And yet, this fact is denied by many to this day, even beyond the descendants of the Confederacy.
In 1866 the Virginia journalist Edward A. Pollard created a false history, contrary to the Confederacy’s own documents, in his book The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. Along with his second book and other writers, an alternative to factual history was formed, distorting the historical record related to slavery and the Civil War, while putting on full display the racial ideology that underpinned the foundation of the southern culture and economy, White Supremacy.
Over time, the tenets of the Lost Cause narrative became: Slavery was not the central reason for the Civil War; the concept of states’ rights was the only reason. The southern states had to secede to protect themselves against northern aggression to usurp their rights and destroy their culture of grace and gentility. Slavery was actually good for the African workers, and they were very happy with their status. According to Pollard, slavery was a misnomer for the “system of servitude in the South, which was really the mildest in the world; which did not rest on acts of debasement and disenfranchisement, but elevated the African …” All of this is blatantly false.
The racial ideology brought by the European settlers and expanded upon in the Americas, that underpinned the “right” of southerners to enslave Africans, was White Supremacy. White people were intrinsically superior to Africans, and Whites could do whatever they wanted to them. In the minds of adherents of White Supremacy, slavery did not warrant a discussion about morality. Whites had their rightful place, and the enslaved Africans had theirs, in service to Whites. Plus, the final spin on this “fairy tale” was that the Confederate military was not defeated. The North had enormous resources at their disposal. It was not because of deficiencies in the Confederate military leadership or fighters. The Confederates were neither traitors nor losers but brave heroes.
One might have thought that in 1865, with adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution abolishing slavery, the way was paved for the formerly enslaved Africans to be full citizens of the United States. No.
How about The Civil Rights Act of 1866 that established that all persons born in the United States, regardless of race, color, or "previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude," were entitled to basic rights of citizenship "in every state and territory in the United States"? No.
The Fourteenth Amendment provides that all those "born or naturalized in the United States," including former enslaved persons, “… are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It provides all citizens with “equal protection under the laws,” extending the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states. It states that no State shall “…deprive any person of life, liberty or property…nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It was ratified in July 1868. No.
The Fifteenth Amendment provides that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” No.
It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that Black People, many descendants from the enslaved Africans, were legally entitled to vote for a person of their own choosing and to live in a community of their own choosing, in stark contrast to the Jim Crow segregation in the South and North that followed slavery. But no.
Concerning Fair Housing laws, this Law Review article describes in detail the myriad ways federal and local governments have intentionally and by omission – as evidenced by successful lawsuits brought by ERASE Racism and others – refused to dismantle structural racism in laws and failed to enforce Fair Housing laws, allowing housing discrimination to continue in full force.
Concerning voting rights, Georgia and many other states have aggressively passed voter suppression laws for decades. This year in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has successfully hollowed out the voting rights protections for African Americans, reversing the original intent of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
What is the connection between the White Supremacy articulated earlier in this article and the numerous actions up to 2026 that have denied Blacks full citizenship? White supremacy ideation shapes government policy and legal actions, which animate and sustain structural racism. Structural racism marginalizes, discriminates, and segregates African Americans, producing advantages for Whites and disadvantages and oppression for African Americans. Citizen compliance and ignorance perpetuate structural racism.
More of the origin story. In 1894, female descendants of Confederate veterans founded The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). They and many others became purveyors of the “Lost Cause” ideology and embodied it by erecting numerous statues of Confederate soldiers glorifying and memorializing them and their cause, especially during the Jim Crow era and again after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education barring racial segregation in public schools, continuing through the civil rights era of the 1960s.
These monuments – placed in public squares, at state capitols, and in front of courthouses – were political statements of power, symbolizing the moral victory of the Lost Cause (despite the military failure of the Confederacy), because Whites remained in charge politically and White Supremacy was embedded in culture, governments, and other institutions like schools. The UDC ensured that school textbooks in the South and Confederate Memorial Day ceremonies, among other occurrences, showcased history according to the Lost Cause. Only in very recent years have some of those memorials and monuments been removed. But the White Supremacy that underpins these monuments continues unabated.
The appeals in support of White Supremacy come in many forms. Take this example: The late, legendarily brutal, campaign consultant Lee Atwater, who worked in President Reagan’s White House, explained how Republicans could win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites… ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’”
In 1980 Ronald Reagan launched his general election campaign at a Mississippi State Fair, just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi—the location where three civil rights workers (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner) were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. During his speech, Reagan explicitly declared, "I believe in states' rights." This is the same "states' rights" hailed as the reason for the formation of the Confederacy defending the continuation of slavery and the justification of Jim Crow racial segregation thereafter. Historians argue this was a deliberate dog whistle to White southern voters, still clinging to White Supremacy.
The nod to White Supremacy (not just in the South) and the public policies and laws that reflect it remain with us today. The United States has not resolved the contradiction that a nation founded on the racial ideology of White Supremacy still believes that it epitomizes freedom, democracy and equality. Most of the general public and the leaders at all levels of government, including up to the US Supreme Court, have never engaged in a sustained effort to understand and analyze the roots and manifestations of White Supremacy, historically and now, and how it is manifested in our government, laws, the courts, and other institutional policies and practices.
Unfortunately, a nation that cannot admit past mistakes will not envision a way forward that is different from the past. In other words, structural racism is inescapable, unless and until it is dismantled and unless and until the fallacy of White Supremacy ceases to be normalized. Silence or willful ignorance is a recipe for maintaining the status quo, a flawed democracy that denies full benefits for and participation of its African American citizens.
The challenge moving forward is to recognize the structural racism that remains embedded in America, despite our highest aspirations. That structural racism must be eliminated for the aspirations of a multiracial democracy to be realized.
Elaine Gross
Founder and President Emerita