1876: The Year When Things Went from Bad to Worse for Indians and Blacks

By William Loren Katz
1-23-12

William Loren Katz, author of forty books on American history, is a visiting scholar at New York University. His website is williamlkatz.com. A new, expanded edition of his 1986 book "Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage" was just published.

As 2011 ended the U.S. Senate voted 92 to 6 for the McCain-Levin amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. In the name of fighting terrorism, an astounding majority of Democratic and Republican leaders granted unlimited authority to the president and the Army to arrest anyone, citizen or foreigner, here or abroad, and imprison them in Poland, Pennsylvania, or Guantanamo or anywhere else—indefinitely. Ninety-two of our Senators agreed the detained could be denied access to attorneys and loved ones, and “enhanced interrogation” rather than legal procedures would determine if they are guilty of terrorist plots. True, some rigid constitutionalists and libertarians from Senator Rand Paul on the right to the ACLU on the left have condemned S 1867 as a threat to our core beliefs and democratic system. But S 167 swept through on the 235th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.

Actually, we celebrated our founding document while undermining its principles in the centennial year of 1876, too. That year, what might be called a federal-state task force, which included a majority of members of Congress and the Supreme Court, and the president chose to override the Declaration’s bold assertion of liberty, the Constitution’s “more perfect Union” and Abraham Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom.” They did so to serve an unholy alliance of northern railroad builders and land speculators, unrepentant former slaveholders and assorted white supremacists—and their obedient lobbyists and media. What followed was a severe and simultaneous assault on the basic rights of Native Americans and African Americans that sent the country careening in a new direction.

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