Ah, the United States. The land of the free and the home of the brave. Now I know what you're thinking: "Is the United States one of the nicest countries in the world, right?" Well, yes, but throughout history, no. To put it bluntly, the United States has done some awful stuff ever since the end of the Civil War. Like every other country, the US has a fair share of controversial moments made in history, such as Jim Crow, a topic that will be relevant shortly. So anyway, here's five controversial things that the US has done that nobody wants to talk about, plus one bonus fact as well.
5. 1850 Fugitive Slave Act
You see, in the events leading up to the Civil War, the United States had been divided among the North and South's conflicting ideologies, with the North desiring a full stop to slavery and the South wanting to preserve slavery, as it was very important to their economy. The situation came to a head in 1850 when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law which stated that slaves needed to be returned to their respective owners, regardless whether they were in a free state or not. The law indirectly made the federal government collaborate with the South in trying to returning slaves back to their owners. The Underground Railroad was formed in response to this law, which included some famous blacks that led the Underground Railroad, the most famous was a certain Harriet Tubman. Even Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin in response to the Fugitive Slave Law. This act remained in force until it was repealed in 1864 during the late years of the American Civil War.
4. Operation Condor
During the Cold War, the United States feared a potential communist takeover throughout South America, especially when several left-wing governments were set up in those countries. So, in 1968, South America, backed by the United States, organized an anti-communist clandestine operation called Operation Condor. This operation was organized mainly to curb Soviet influence in the United States, and in the 1970s, several right-wing governments were set up throughout South America, beginning with the overthrow of left-wing Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973. Each South American country had a right-wing leader that mostly repressed any left-wing sympathizers, the most famous of which were Jorge Rafael Videla and Augusto Pinochet of Argentina and Chile respectively.
Even though Operation Condor was meant to contain the spread of communism in South America, it totally soon got out of hand as the clandestine nature of the operation often involved the use of torture, extrajudicial killings, forced abductions, and executions, not to mention that 30,000 left-wing sympathizers were abducted in Videla's Argentina alone. Between 1968 to 1989, numbers are hard to estimate how many people died at the hands of Operation Condor, but conservative estimates say that 60,000-80,000 leftist sympathizers were executed during this period. The operation continued until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. So far, many people who served or worked for their respective juntas are already serving life sentences in prison for crimes against humanity.
Here are the South American leaders that took part in Operation Condor, shown below.
- Argentina - Jorge Rafael Videla
- Bolivia - Hugo Banzer
- Brazil - Ernesto Geisel and Artur da Costa e Silva
- Chile - Augusto Pinochet
- Paraguay - Alfredo Stroessner
- Uruguay - Aparcio Mendez
3. Voting Rights
The United States was one of the first countries to give women the right to vote following the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Prior to that, however, only men had the right to vote and to be fair, it was totally unequal and inegalitarian. Although women had the right to vote shortly after the end of the American Revolution, it was rescinded in 1807 and women were denied voting rights for this reason. The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention helped kickstart the women's rights movement and was led by famous people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony. The fight for women's suffrage continued throughout the late 19th century until 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified, allowing women the right to vote. Despite this, African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American women weren't included in the 19th Amendment until later.
2. Internment of Japanese Americans
During World War 2, Japanese Americans were the target of persecution by the federal government under the allegations that they were engaging in espionage and illegal activity for Japan. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066, which stated that regional military commanders were ordered to form military areas from which people may be excluded. Although Executive Order 9066 didn't mention Japanese Americans, it made it clear that people living in Alaska with Japanese ancestry were ordered to leave their homes under the threat of deportation, even those who were born in the United States. Internment wasn't only limited to Japanese Americans. Even people with German and Italian ancestry were also shipped to internment camps as well.
The sad truth of the matter was that out of the 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans who were imprisoned, the vast majority of those were innocent, and it was done out of blatant racism and not alleged loyalty to the Axis government in Japan. In 1976, President Gerald Ford officialy terminated Executive Order 9066 and apologized for the country's role in the internment of Japanese Americans, and Jimmy Carter signed a legislation to form the CWRIC.
1. Jim Crow
Perhaps the most shameful mistake done by the United States throughout in history is - yes, you guessed it - Jim Crow. You see, the United States did more than imprisoning Japanese Americans in World War 2 out of blatant racism, no, they even let the South impose racial segregation in their states at the expense of black interests.
After the end of Reconstruction in 1877, white people living in the South, especially Southern Democrats, were prejudiced among the African American community in the South, fearing that they might attempt to steal their jobs. Things came to a head in 1896 when the Plessy v. Ferguson case upheld the law of racial segregation as long blacks were provided with "separate but equal" facilities, one black, the other white. Restaurants, cemeteries, movie theaters, hospitals, schools, and others were heavily segregated over the course of the Jim Crow era in the South. President Woodrow Wilson, who was a Southern Democrat, encouraged the segregation of federal spaces and public offices. Segregation wasn't limited to the Deep South. Border states and states outside the south also implemented segregation as well.
Life for blacks in the South during the Jim Crow period was, to put it bluntly, a living hell. Black facilities were consistently underpaid by governments in the South, or in some cases, not given money to the point these facilities would become bankrupt. Residential areas for blacks were often poor in quality and quantity, and were usually run-down shantytowns. White Southern Democrats often abused their power to segregate more public spaces in order to assert social dominance over black residents. Often, there was the threat of lynching, of which blacks were common victims of said hate crimes, especially when they were framed for crimes they didn't commit. It is estimated that 4,000 blacks died at the hands of lynch mobs during the Jim Crow era. These problems were the reasons for the Great Migration, of which 6 million blacks left the South in search of better life and work.
1954 was an important year because it oversaw the Brown v. Board of Education case in which Chief Justice Earl Warren declared racial segregation in the public schools illegal. This landmark act would pave the way for the end of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement that would continue until 1964, when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and ratified on the same year, and with that, ended the Jim Crow era.
Bonus: Tulsa Race Massacre
You know how I said that blacks were the frequent target of mass lynchings? Well, just wait till you hear about the infamous Tulsa race massacre, which took place during the Jim Crow era.
Back during the early 20th century, there once stood a district in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, called Greenwood. Commonly called as the Black Wall Street, Greenwood was mostly populated by blacks and was one of the United States's most prosperous black communities. That is until 1921, when a minor incident turned things for the worst, which apparently happened to be an elevator incident involving a black man called Dick Rowland and a white woman called Sarah Page, whose foot was stepped on unknowingly by Rowland. He escaped, but was eventually jailed soon after. This incident is probably one reason for the Tulsa race massacre of 1921.
Things came to a head on May 31 when a group of white mobs surrounded the courthouse and demanded that Rowland be handed to them. This soon escalated into brutal and inhumane fighting as white vigilantes, who were armed by city officials, descended into Greenwood and basically murdered every single black person they could get their hands on, as well as torching stores owned by black people. Even city officials, especially National Guard units, collaborated with the white mobs in the destruction of Greenwood as well. By the end of May, most of Greenwood was totally destroyed and more than 100 people, mostly blacks, lost their lives.
The sad truth of the matter was that this was all done out blatant prejudice against black people with no proof whatsoever of blacks doing something terrible, let alone a black guy stepping on a foot of a white woman. After the riots, Greenwood never fully recovered from the damages it suffered; poverty among black residents soared over the following years. In the decades to come, no city official has apologized for the Tulsa race massacre. A wall mural saying "Black Wall St." stands on the former site of Greenwood where people of all races can visit (I've been to Oklahoma one time, and I haven't been to this wall mural yet).
Oh yeah, and if you don't know, May 31, 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. Since that date is gonna take some time to pass, I'm confident that some descendants of white people who took part in the massacre are gonna break the silence and apologize for their ancestors' role in the destruction of Greenwood. But, who knows?
Conclusion
That was pretty much what I could think of America's greatest past mistakes. If there are some more terrible things America has done in its history that I didn't put in, please let me know in the comments below. Perhaps there may be any other obscure terrible historical events that the United States has ever done in history.
