However, Jim Crow laws managed to take away voting rights from most blacks in the South until the early sixties. That is also when the legal apartheid system known as "Jim Crow" finally ended. Until the early sixties there were states where Black peple could not vote, could not enter most shops or resteraunts, had to ride different classes of accomoadation on public transport, had to go miles out of their way compared to whites to find a restromm they could use. Could be jailed for marrying or dating whites (not to mention the real dangers of execution in public lynchings-, though I believe that mostly ended in the fifties). I do know that until Truman, the armed forces of the U.S. were segregated, and black soldiers assigned to worse assignments. Legal equality between blacks and whites in the U.S. is a comparatively recent phenomena. I bring this up here, because I knew several French people in the eighties whom this came as a surprise to, so the thought occurs to me that there might be UnAmericans posting who don't know it. The U.S. South in the 50s (and before of course) was very much like Apartheid South Africa.

There's a fraternity (KA) on my campus which is the Southern fraternity. Honorary president is Jefferson Davis. Each year, their big party is the KA Ball, when the symbolically "secede" from the campus, and all the guys dress in Confederate uniforms and their girlfriends get Scarlet O'Hara dresses. A few years ago, they got in some trouble with the university because they paid some black kids a few dollars to pretend to pick cotton on the lawn of their house. The compromise reached after that was that they could continue to have the ball (the university didn't want to alienate alumni), but they're not allowed on campus in their uniforms. (They don't obey this at all.)

Without the Official Secret Police. (They were unofficial, although, during their day jobs, some of them were police.) So, yeah.

You shouldn't be able to look out your office and see New Jersey!

Well, the Northeast Corridor is so named for a reason. And I like the idea that, until Virginia, you can't come across any territory that isn't incorporated into one town or another. The big empty spaces in the west freak me out.

Never more than 5 miles from a Dunkin Donuts, yo.

Never more than 5 miles from a taquería, yo.

(Looks out of office. Waves to New Jersey)

Well, the Northeast Corridor is so named for a reason. And I like the idea that, until Virginia, you can't come across any territory that isn't incorporated into one town or another.

The Boswash megalopolis!!

Sorry, got a little excited there for a minute.

I was going to make the same point about Jim Crow laws, Typo Boy.

I do love the word "megalopolis". It rolls off the tongue. It ought to be a kind of ice cream. Sort of like tutti frutti, but with more mix-ins.

I spent a long part of my childhood thinking that Britain was vast, because it took days to get from here to there. (You know, I knew they were riding horses, but somehow I assumed that horses and cars went the same speed.) I was very disappointed when I discovered that the English and the Scots had been fighting over a football-field's worth of territory for several hundred years. I mean, for crying out loud.

Bwah!
If it’s any consolation most of us grow up thinking the same thing and there are grown adults, educated grown adults I have met who still believe that the world revolves around the South of England.

British geography and dialects etc all evolved from walking distances. 10 miles in a day is a fair days walk and defines the radius of most local and dialect boundries.
By this definition Edinburgh and London are actually in different worlds.

It’s fascinating to read about travelling in the US. The distances are mind-boggling.

Until the early sixties there were states where Black peple could not vote, could not enter most shops or resteraunts, had to ride different classes of accomoadation on public transport, had to go miles out of their way compared to whites to find a restromm they could use ... Legal equality between blacks and whites in the U.S. is a comparatively recent phenomena.

Thanks Gar, this is what I knew some of and why I had made the assumption that 'voting rights' were part of the 'civil rights' movement. That is why I was so surprised when the answer was 1868, I was sorta expecting 1968.

I'm trying to suss out if there is any correlation with people's experience/knowledge of things like the civil rights movement and their conception of democracy. As in, are you more likely to see democracy as an evolutionary process if you were born around the time of the CRM or the decade or so after, when the issues were still at the forefront of socio-political education.

The angle I'm coming from is that much of the peace/anti-war and even some of the anti-US imperialism sentiment seems based in a gut-understanding of the hypocrisy inherent in the way that most US foreign and economic policies are enforced around the world.

Is it because many who have experiential, or at least academic understanding, of such major issues as civil rights and equality, recognise that those are aspects of democracy that we have only recently figured out for ourselves?

Why do some people believe so strongly that democracy as a practical application can be forced/co-erced/enacted as a static entity onto nations and cultures who have no background of anything resembling democracy and no real understanding of the concepts which go to make up democracy (as we know it), such as equality, to take one example?

Have these people(?) forgotten that we only achieved some of this stuff for ourselves within the last few decades and have we really gotten all the wrinkles ironed out ourselves, or are our legal systems still struggling with case after case brought about on racial or discriminatory grounds.

Sorry this isn't particularly structured it's sorta stream-of-consciousness at the moment.

Sarameg, thanks for the link I'm going to go read it now.