The Marketing of Neo- Reconstruction
At the end of slavery, the Republican party took the lead on attempting to fairly and justly integrate African Americans into American life. This was done through a government-led effort called “Reconstruction,’’ a period that lasted roughly from the passing of The Reconstruction Act of 1867 to The Compromise of 1877. During that decade of Reconstruction, African Americans were enfranchised, legally given Voting and Civil Rights. Nearly 2,000 African Americans were elected to public office, and the black representation in the South Carolina State Legislature was a robust 59%. In 1876, Republican Presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes reached a compromise with the Democratic Party that ceded control of the South to the Democrats, ending Reconstruction and eventually leading to the institution of a Jim Crow era that placed African Americans in a form of de facto slavery for approximately the next 100 years. Had Reconstruction continued, the African American condition and race relations in America would be far beyond what they are today. Recognizing this unfortunately lost opportunity, we propose Neo Reconstruction, an aggressive initiative that has the purpose of redressing past wrongs and revitalizing the black community economically, educationally, judicially and in every other way necessary to assure that African Americans have full and equal opportunity and status within our country.
