Hickman demonstrates that he is just one more uneducated person who hasn't read the basic books and learned the history of what he writes about. He substitutes a bigger mouth for a smaller amount of facts.
The central book ever written on this subject is, The Strange Career of Jim Crow by Professor C. Vann Woodward. (I knew Woodward, and his son was a classmate of mine for ten years.) Rather than assume that the Jim Crow laws were passed immediately after the end of the Civil War, Woodward did his homework.
The Jim Crow laws were passed up to three decades after the end of the war. They were not passed by the Southern leaders during and prior to the war. They were replaced by the Populists -- in many ways the progenitors of today's Democrats. But, telling the truth about the Jim Crow laws would undercut Hickham's bigotry.
I don't accuse Hickham of lying to the readers. I assume that he is genuinely ignorant in his statements. But are all the editors of USA Today, owned by Gannett, also equally ignorant of the history of the Jim Crow laws? Or are they afraid to edit the writings of an angry black liberal, so they just let the error run? (After all, he's a black writer. They have lower standards, right?"
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, now up FR, "Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies."