Republican Party Abandons Black Civil Rights to Pursue Southern White Voters

By 1900, the Republican Party — the 'Party of Lincoln' that had passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments — had largely abandoned the cause of Black civil rights in pursuit of sectional reconciliation with white Southerners and Northern white business interests. Federal troops were withdrawn from the South in 1877; subsequent Republican presidents (McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft) largely declined to challenge Southern disfranchisement, refused to support federal anti-lynching legislation, and allowed the rollback of Reconstruction gains to continue. The Lily-white movement within the Republican Party in the South explicitly purged Black members.