In Alternet’s The Conversation, there is a fascinating article called Charlottesville Belies Racism’s Deep Roots in the North.
Jim Crow, the system of laws that advanced segregation and black disenfranchisement, began in the North, not the South, as most Americans believe. Long before the Civil War, northern states like New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had legal codes that promoted black people’s racial segregation and political disenfranchisement.
If racism is only pictured in spitting and screaming, in torches and vigilante justice and an allegiance to the Confederacy, many Americans can rest easy, believing they share little responsibility in its perpetuation. But the truth is, Americans all over the country do bear responsibility for racial segregation and inequality.
This article is not an attempt to rehabilitate the Confederacy, nor the “Southern Pattern” that developed post-bellum and, especially, post-Reconstruction. We Southern whites have much to answer for and we have not, even now, done near enough to root out the cancers of our history and get beyond the entrapment of that history. Rather, it is an attempt to remind us all that racism is a deep-seated American problem that needs to be confronted—including historical confrontation—throughout the nation, instead of believing that this is simply a “Southern problem.”
I highly recommend the entire article.