Nadir of American race relations

The nadir of American race relations is a historical period defined by historian Rayford Logan as the worst time for race relations in the United States after the Civil War ended slavery. It overlapped with the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, following the Reconstruction era and the financial Panic of 1873, amid a continuing decline in cotton prices. The period was characterized by the legal solidification of Jim Crow laws, the rise of lynchings and racial massacres, and the nationwide institution of sundown towns.

Historians differ on the period's date range. Logan's 1954 book The Negro in American Life and Thought defines "The Nadir, 1877–1901" when "the Negro's status in American society" fell lowest, arguing for 1901 as the turning point when race relations started to improve. Others, such as John Hope Franklin and Henry Arthur Callis, argue for ending dates as late as 1923. James W. Loewen (2006) argues for a later starting date, seeing the post-Reconstruction era as one of widespread hope for racial equity due to idealistic Northern support for civil rights. In Loewen's view, the true nadir only began when Northern Republicans ceased supporting Southern black people's rights around 1890, and it lasted until the American entry into World War II in 1941.

Logan's focus was exclusively on African Americans in the Southern United States, but the period also represents the worst of anti-Chinese and anti-Asian discrimination, when fear of the so-called Yellow Peril incited harassment and violence on the West Coast and the destruction of Denver's Chinatown.

Background

Reconstruction revisionism

In the early 20th century, a group of white historians claimed that Reconstruction was a tragic period for the South, when Northern Republicans motivated by revenge and profit used federal troops to force the defeated Southerners to accept corrupt governments run by unscrupulous Northerners and feckless black people.