From American Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1840

I've been reading Heather Cox Richardson's "How the South Won the Civil War" and I highly recommend it. I was struck by the observation she made that post Civil War blacks were equated with communist.

Recalling that Marx's "Das Kapital" came out in 1867, she went on to write "These growing northern fears about a radicalized lower class meshed easily with southern racism. The Paris Commune had organized in 1871, the year after the Fifteenth Amendment had guaranteed black men the right to vote. White men in South Carolina took advantage of this confluence and began to attack the idea of black voting not on racial grounds-although all the men involved had been vocal in their dislike of African Americans-but on the grounds that it gave poor men control over the states' government, and that they were using that majority power to redistribute wealth.'

I thought I'd use Chronicling America to see if I could find contemporary articles using search "negro" + "Communist" (within 10 words of each other). I found quite a few articles and thought I might make for the start of an interesting lesson.

I've included a few articles and a lesson idea:
Divide the students into small groups and assign each group one of the newspaper clippings from the 1870s that argued the connection between Black rights / suffrage and communism.
Ask each group to read and analyze their assigned clipping, and answer the following questions:
- What is the main argument or claim of the article?
- What evidence or reasoning does the article use to support its argument or claim?
- What is the tone or perspective of the article? Is it biased or objective? How can you tell?
- How does the article relate Black rights / suffrage to communism? What is the logic or assumption behind this connection?
- How does the article reflect the fear of the white landowners in the South? What are they afraid of losing or changing?
- After each group has completed their analysis, ask them to share their findings and insights with the rest of the class. Encourage the students to compare and contrast the different articles and their arguments, and to identify any similarities or differences in their approaches or perspectives.

As a follow-up activity, ask the students to research and discuss some contemporary views that promote the same assertion that voting rights for all will lead to redistribution of wealth from the upper to lower classes. For example, they can look at some recent debates or controversies over voter suppression, gerrymandering, campaign finance, or tax policies. They can also examine some current examples or movements that advocate for social or economic justice, such as Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, or the Green New Deal. Ask the students to consider the following questions:
- How do these contemporary views echo or challenge the views expressed in the newspaper clippings from the 1870s?
- What are the historical and social contexts that shape these views? How have they changed or remained the same over time?
- What are the implications or consequences of these views for the political and economic system of the United States? How do they affect the rights and opportunities of different groups of people?

The daily gazette (Wilmington, Del.), June 10, 1879

The daily gazette (Wilmington, Del.), August 4, 1876

Bellows Falls times (Bellows Falls, Vt.), March 5, 1875

The daily Gazette (Wilmington, Del.), October 25, 1877