Negro in American life and thought: the nadir, 1877-1901

Rayford Whittingham Logan

Between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 (when Hayes sacrificed African-American freedom in exchange for the White House) and the end of World War I in 1918, African Americans experienced their nadir. North and South colluded in gutting the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, depriving African Americans of their rights, and denying them equal education and a living wage. The Betrayal of the Negro (originally published as The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901 and subsequently expanded) is the only full-scale account to document with encyclopedic research this neglected period in American history. The author examines every aspect of our country's post-Reconstruction retreat from equality: the economic factors, the Supreme Court decision, Booker T. Washington and his "Era of Compromise," and, in a unique and disturbing survey, the racist caricatures that dominated the most liberal newspapers and magazines of the day. Dispassionate and insightful, Logan unfolds a narrative of national betrayal as harrowing as it is heartbreaking.