The 'Nadir': Historians Document 1890-1920 as Lowest Point in Black American Civil Status

Historian Rayford Logan coined the term 'the Nadir' for the period approximately 1890-1920, when conditions for Black Americans reached their lowest point since slavery. Complete disfranchisement, comprehensive Jim Crow segregation, escalating lynching, economic peonage, convict leasing, the reimposition of white supremacy through terror, and the withdrawal of federal protection all converged. The era is important context for understanding not just individual acts of oppression but the systematic reconstruction of racial hierarchy following Reconstruction's overthrow.