To Render Invisible

Abstract

At the end of the Civil War, black men in Jacksonville were ushered into public life through the support of the Republican Party. As the black vote became independent, conservative whites recast black political participation as volatile and associated black voters with a “mob-public.” Conservative lawmakers created the color-line as a way to render blacks both invisible and voiceless in the public square. At the same time, the labor movement and women entered into public life as at no other era in American history. As these new political actors engaged in the theatre of the public sphere, political discourse became more contested and resulted not only in the removal of blacks from white public spaces but also in their removal from the public sphere altogether as a way to “restore order” and return white rule to Jacksonville. In response to such disfranchisement, a black counterpublic emerged that was, at times, clandestine and, that, at other times,directly challenged racism in the public sphere.