The Other Big Lie

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Ahead of the second anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Mother Jones video journalist Garrison Hayes teamed up with contributing essayist Anthony Conwright to examine the overlooked motivations of the mob. While much of the nation's attention has been consumed by Trump's “Big Lie”, Conwright argues that there is a familiar—and very American—motive being minimized in the reckoning: racial resentment. Tracing this white grievance to the post-Civil War period, Conwright hears a distinct historical echo in how white paramilitary groups used violence and intimidation, often with the help of pro-slavery Democrats, to steal elections and maintain power after the abolition of slavery.

A quick history lesson: By the 1870s, Congress had unshackled a powerful new voting bloc. But with the 1875 elections in Mississippi came a brutal backlash: White extremist groups mobilized to steal the election and blame Black people and Republican officials for their actions. “This fear of ‘Negro rule’ animated Southern Democrats and their white supremacist militias,” Hayes explains. “They intimidated would-be Black voters who showed up at the polls, spread lies about widespread voter fraud, murdered hundreds of Black citizens who tried to vote, and kidnapped and executed both Black and white political leaders in the weeks and months leading up to the election, all to ensure a particular outcome.”

The U.S. Senate formed a committee to investigate the violence and condemned the white grievance at the heart of the insurrection. However, Congress failed to protect Black voting rights or punish the perpetrators of the stolen election, despite their efforts to protect Black Americans with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. The stolen election was allowed to stand, and two years later, a back-room pact allowed Republicans to keep the presidency after the disputed 1876 elections in exchange for removing federal troops from the South—ushering in Jim Crow.

Conwright concludes by drawing a comparison to the Capitol riots, arguing the attack wasn't just about Trump. It was driven by an even darker element of American myth-making and the need to protect white power: “There is a belief that America is a white country that they own, what democracy is, and what it looks like, and how it can be implemented. That to me is at the core of what happened.”

Conwright's essay can be found in the latest edition of Mother Jones and at motherjones.com.

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