Capitulation to Racism Summary and Analysis

The year 1898, found south Carolina struggling with the merits of a Jim Crow law regarding railroad cars. A Charleston newspaper, largely espousing the conservative view, pointed to the ridiculousness of the law by taking the concept of Jim Crow to the extreme, even to the point of different governmental offices for the races to pay their taxes or the setting aside of counties where only blacks would live. What this satirical piece became, however, was a prediction of the reality which eventually took hold in the South - complete segregation in all public facilities. Just how this extreme racism came to be was not so much a matter of the forces behind it becoming stronger so much as the opposition to it losing its vigor. Conservatives, liberals, and Populists simply became complacent, weakened, and discredited.

The first...