ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the historians' use of racism excluded important areas of black culture and politics and mystified central dynamics in black history by examining a central period in Afro-American history from the formal end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the creation of the legal structure of Jim Crow during the first decade of the twentieth century. Sometimes called the Era of Booker T. Washington, the period has been well explored by historians. The political order of Reconstruction, which had been based upon Republican rule through black voting, was replaced by Democratic hegemony, reflecting planter and capitalist interests in the South. Because the new regimes represented a minority of the population, they were able to remain in power only through demagoguery, fraud, violence, and laws designed to restrict the electorate. Madison Grant's support of some of the works of Radicalism the southern Republican regimes and black voting rights became a defense of partisan power, not an instrument of social transformation.
