Shortly after the Supreme Court handed down the Civil Rights Cases in 1883 [which declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional], a mass meeting was called for Lincoln Hall in the nation’s capital. Two prominent Republican orators — one black and one white — were the featured speakers. Frederick Douglass — the runaway slave who had become an avid student of the Constitution in the course of his career as an abolitionist — spoke first.
Robert G. Ingersoll [born in 1833 in Yates County, NY] — highly valued as a Republican orator despite his outspoken atheist views — closed the program. In some ways, the event was a political rally, similar to others that had characterized both the long battle against slavery and the heady early days of Reconstruction. [Read more…] about The End of Reconstruction & The Civil Rights Cases of 1883
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