#lostcause

"It's the eyes, chico. They never lie"

The end of Reconstruction and the dawn of Jim Crow was a coordinated social and political project. Organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy rewrote K-12 textbooks to romanticize the defeated Confederacy and sanitize slavery. Powerbrokers erected monuments to Confederate soldiers, recast Black political participation as illegitimate, and imposed barriers to the ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a defining blow in 1896 by sanctioning racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson. This sweeping campaign became known as the Lost Cause. Its corrosive, erroneous message was simple: an inclusive democracy threatens white political and economic power.