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The Grand Boulé at the Dawn of a New Century 95 95 4 The Grand Boulé at the Dawn of a New Century Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity William H. Harris At the dawn of the twentieth century, the nation that had developed from the British colonies on the North American shores of the Atlantic Ocean had expanded to occupy the length and breadth of the continent. Indeed, the United States of America now spanned from sea to shining sea. On the Atlantic were metropolises such as Boston and New York City, while Los Angeles and San Francisco lay on the shores of the Pacific. In between, the great cities of Chicago and St. Louis, the luscious plains, the southern farmlands, and the vastness of Texas and the Southwest contributed to the nation’s might. The still new nation, by world standards, stood in splendid isolation, protected between the two oceans. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States was a magnificent example of the good fortune that could befall a nation. Yet the United States had not come this far without difficulty, and not all of its citizens shared in the bounty. Even settlers in the earliest colony had struggled with the fundamental issue of race. From the first days of colonization , North America was occupied by both Europeans, mainly British, and Africans. The Europeans, the dominant group, were intent on showing that one could build a nation on smoke, but doing so required massive amounts of labor to grow the precious tobacco that could make the dream real. Over the years, the colonists added cotton, another labor-intensive crop, to the products that contributed to the wealth of America. To meet their teeming labor needs, the Europeans imported men and women from Africa in greater and greater numbers in what became part of the largest slave trade in the history of the world. As the numbers of Africans and Europeans increased, the leaders of the colonies cobbled together two paradoxical frameworks: one of the harshest systems of human slavery ever known, and the greatest institution of participatory democracy and protection of individual rights in the world. During brownchap04.pmd 1/11/2005, 3:56 PM 95 96 William H. Harris the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through a series of wars, the colonies freed themselves from British control and established the independent nation of the United States of America.The new nation adopted the racial laws that had permitted slavery in the colonies, and its new Constitution forbade Congress to interfere with the international slave trade for twenty years. It is important to note that as soon as that restriction expired, Congress outlawed the Atlantic slave trade to the United States, but it did not outlaw slavery.1 During the early to mid-nineteenth century, a major divide over slavery developed, culminating in the 1860s in a war that divided North against South and,in many instances,brother against brother. Citizens of the northern states, fighting under the leadership of President Abraham Lincoln to preserve the Union and eventually to outlaw slavery, prevailed. The Civil War resulted in the elimination of slavery and the freedom of millions of American-born descendants of Africans. African Americans also received a constitutional guarantee of equal citizenship as a result of the war. Further,the newly united federal government was recognized as one of the most powerful governments in the world. Despite the victory by the North and the constitutional amendments that followed, it would be incorrect to conclude that the Civil War and the subsequent Reconstruction marked the end of race as a major issue in the United States. It is true that for a time, numerous people made efforts to integrate the former slaves into the fabric of American life, but this was not to be. In fact, as the twentieth century approached, the situation for African Americans was such that one historian dubbed it the nadir of their time inAmerica.The United States was far from welcoming to black Americans, and this would not change for another century. Race remained the most important issue in America.2 In 1903, W. E. B. DuBois, in his book Souls of Black Folk, observed that “the problem of the twentieth century is the color line.”3 Shortly before,DuBois had completed The Philadelphia Negro, a major study of African Americans in Philadelphia.4 He found that progress among the general black population was such that, by the beginning of...

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