The first land battle of the American Civil War was fought on 5 July 1861 in Carthage, Missouri, 16 miles (22km) from my birthplace. Although the war ended 161 years ago, Americans have continued to fight it over and over again ever since. The latest battle took place on 29 April 2026 in the US Supreme Court when a conservative majority basically gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a measure that protected the franchise of black citizens.
After the Civil War, congress brought in the 15th Amendment to the Constitution – prohibiting federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” . That measure protected black voters against discrimination during the period known as Reconstruction, from 1867 to 1877.
So abhorrent to the South was the idea of black men voting (women wouldn’t get the right to vote until 1920) that the southern states gave up the presidency in 1876 in order to end Reconstruction and institute racial segregation, codified in the ‘Jim Crow’ laws. And here we are, 149 years later, witnessing the advent of Jim Crow 2.0.
Black and white separation
The original Jim Crow laws took a number of forms including political, legal and social measures to differentiate between white and black, allowing the white majority in southern states to oppress the black minority. I spent the first 10 years of my life in southwest Missouri – separate schools for white and black, separate public toilets, separate lodgings, restaurants, and residential areas. In Joplin, all ‘colored folks’ lived literally ‘across the tracks’ in what’s known as East Harlem.
To be clear, the south never had a monopoly on racism and white supremacy. Three black men were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota in 1920. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rioted in New York City in 1927 – the Klan in NYC! There were white protests against school desegregation in Boston 1974–76, often violent. America saw the Rodney King beating by white LA police in 1991, followed by riots in 1992 when his attackers were acquitted.
Even more recently, we had the OJ Simpson trial in 1996, when he was acquitted of killing his white ex-wife. Within an hour, people started choosing sides – OJ guilty (mainly white) versus OJ not necessarily innocent but remember Rodney King (mainly black).
With the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, some talked of a ‘post-racial society’. Those of us who sang We Shall Overcome in the 1960s retained our doubts. And sure enough, in 2016, American voters elected a bigot to occupy the White House.
Neo-Nazis and Trump’s “very fine people“
As previously noted in these pages, Donald Trump has always been a bigot. The Donald does not hide his bigotry; he’s right up front with it. Among his main campaign pledges in 2016: build a wall to keep out Mexican drug dealers and rapists; ban all Muslims; and stop being so damned politically correct. Fellow bigots knew exactly what he meant by ‘politically correct’.
After the KKK and white supremacist riot in Charlottesville in August 2017, Trump said: “What about the alt-left—do they have any semblance of guilt? You had a group on one side that was bad and a group on the other side that was also very violent… You had some very bad people in that group [neo-Nazis], but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
In other words, Trump was telling us that the KKK, the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists on the one side and the counter-protest groups were equally to blame. He later backtracked when even some Republicans condemned the false equivalence.
Immigrants from “shithole countries”
In January 2018, Trump reportedly asked why America would want immigrants from “all these shithole countries,” referring to Haiti and Africa. He thought the US should have more immigrants from places like Norway. Initially, he denied saying this, later, he confirmed it.
Of all the shithole countries, Trump particularly doesn’t like Somalia and Somali-Americans. In December 2025 he said: “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country…Their country is no good for a reason. Your [sic] country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
Of congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who arrived in the US from Somalia via Kenya at the age of 12, Trump said: “Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”
Let’s not even get into the Trump claim during the 2024 campaign that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs and cats in Ohio, or the president posting an AI-generated image of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes three months ago. Some folks just can’t take a joke…right?
Trump targeting African Americans
Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump has specifically targeted African Americans. On his first day in office, 20 January, he declared war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Executive Order 14151 is titled Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing. It terminated all DEI activities by the federal government.
On his second day he rescinded a measure that ensured anti-discrimination in the workplace, that had been in effect since 1965. Six weeks later, he rescinded clause 52.222–21 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation banning the government from doing business with any contractor that has segregated facilities. Also, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that ensured local governments worked to reduce segregation is no longer enforced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to insiders. That’s the law Trump Management violated back in 1973.
Taken all together, Trump’s policies have contributed to a rise in black unemployment, which had been at an historical low of 4.8% under Biden, to 7.5% – more than twice the level of white unemployment.
![Collage of orange 'VOTE' posters with a red fist; a tilted white poster shows abstract faces and the words 'YOU the people of America'.] ,](https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/vote-people-750x375.jpg)
The cheating is now legal
Many years ago, I taught at a school in Arusha, Tanzania. One day we had a class basketball game. I played with the weaker team and we were getting clobbered, so I called a time-out. I said: “It looks bad, team. What should we do?” One bright 11-year-old said: “Let’s cheat.”
And that’s precisely what occurred to the Republicans too. It looks like they will get clobbered in the November mid-terms. A poll 27–30 April found 52% of respondents would vote for Dems versus 42% who would vote for the GOP. So Republicans decided to cheat by redistricting in five states to give themselves an extra 12–15 ‘safe seats’.
After a helpful Supreme Court decision on redistricting, the cheating is now legal and will no doubt escalate. It will likely mean no black representation in Louisiana where a third of the population is black; or South Carolina where one quarter is black; or Mississippi where 38% is black. Florida already voted to redistrict before the mid-terms. Almost 17% of the population is black but it has only two black reps out of 28 districts in congress. That may go down to one, or even zero.
Tennessee did Florida one better. A GOP majority committee voted in favour of a bill that didn’t exist to split the one black majority district in the state around Memphis into three separate districts based on a hastily drawn map. The full legislature passed a bill the next day. One Dem member called the redistricting what it is: Jim Crow.
GOP wins, Dems lose
You might think some states could counter such obvious gerrymandering with redistricting that favoured Democrat and black voters. In Virginia they held a democratic vote to allow residents to agree or disagree with this and the vote was passed in favour. But then the GOP appealed to the state’s Supreme Court, who decided the vote was a ‘constitutional violation’ and struck it down. So bang go the possible four extra Democrat seats that might have been set against the many new Republican ones.
Currently congress has two dozen black representatives from southern states. With redistricting largely favouring the GOP, most seats may become white by 2028. The 62 members of the Congressional Black Caucus – all Dems – may shrink by one third, almost all from the 13 states that fought with the Confederacy in the Civil War.
In effect, all this will take America some way back to the Jim Crow days, which began in 1878 and employed poll taxes and literacy tests to keep black citizens from being able to vote. In 2026, apart from all the gerrymandering, there are new sorts of intimidation that involve the aggressors wearing combat gear rather than white sheets and burning crosses.
America, welcome to Jim Crow 2.0.
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