There is Beauty in Despair: The Resilience of Black Americans
A True American Story
Good versus evil stories always grab me. I enjoy being taken away to another world, learning about its environment and the characters, watching the plot play out. Sometimes, I take wild guesses at the plot line early on, without knowing anything about the plot.
It’s not just me. Our culture has produced thousands of stories of a protagonist heeding the call and taking the hero’s journey. A lot of people must enjoy going along on the journey, rooting for the good team.
When I think of Luke battling Darth Vader or Frodo fighting Sauron (and the precious ring), I am inspired. I know the arc of their stories and all they went up against. In despair, they hung onto a thread of hope to make the world better, not just for themselves, but for everyone.
There is beauty in their despair.
Stories are a way for us to communicate in a relatable and emotional way. The retelling of stories has been a part of humanity since the very beginning. There are cave drawings as far back as 64,000 B.C. (Wikipedia).
I want to tell a true story today—or at least part of it. I’m going to share some of the inspiring historical events of Black Americans. I’ve shared before about the inspiring life of Father Augustus Tolton, for whom The Tolton Path is named. Now I want to share more about the plight, strength and resilience of Americans that have been here since the beginning.
Let’s start this story with the end of the Civil War, a period when Black Americans were, supposedly, free.
Freedom
The Civil War ended in 1865, bringing 4 million enslaved Black Americans into freedom, but with no land, money, or political protection. Despite this, freedmen and women immediately began rebuilding family life, searching for relatives sold away, formalizing marriages, and establishing churches. The Freedmen’s Bureau (1865–1872) provided limited but vital support—education, food, and legal recognition.
Within five years of freedom, Black Americans had founded thousands of schools. Institutions like Howard University (1867), Fisk University (1866), and Hampton Institute (1868) became incubators of leadership. By 1900, the literacy rate among African Americans had risen from about 10% to over 50%—an astonishing transformation.
During Reconstruction (1865–1877), there were nearly 2,000 Black officeholders, from local positions to Congress. Figures like Frederick Douglass, Hiram Revels, Blanche K. Bruce, and Robert Smalls embodied a new civic vision. For a brief moment, America glimpsed what an integrated democracy could be.
The story for Black Americans was changing for the better. The promise of America was finally starting to be offered to them.
But white supremacist violence (KKK, “Redeemer” governments) and discriminatory laws reversed many of these gains. By 1877, federal troops withdrew from the South, marking the end of Reconstruction — and the rise of Jim Crow.
Originating in the South and emerging within the Republican Party in the North in the late 19th century, the Lily White Movement sought to purge Black leadership and voters from party ranks — especially in the South but supported by some northern elites who wanted to “rebrand” the GOP for white moderates.
It was a political betrayal: the party of Lincoln turning away from its Black base.
Despite this, Black Americans continued organizing politically through churches, newspapers, and advocacy groups.
Building Independent Economies
Denied loans and fair markets, Black Americans built parallel economies.
In places like Durham, North Carolina, home to early “Black Wall Street” institutions such as North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance and Mechanics and Farmers Bank and in towns such as Mound Bayou, Mississippi (founded 1887), they created self-sufficient all-Black municipalities with banks and presses.
Schools such as Howard University, and Tuskegee Institute (founded 1881) under Booker T. Washington, becoming national symbols of disciplined Black progress.
Through education, economic development, and institution-building, Black Americans demonstrated that opportunity could be created, not simply awaited.
Northern Migration
Continuing their march toward self-determination, from 1910 to 1940, over 1.5 million Black southerners migrated north to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York seeking safety and opportunity. They brought with them southern faith, music, and craftsmanship, transforming the cultural landscape of America.
This led to the Harlem Renaissance (1918–1930s) and showcased the intellectual and artistic abilities of Black America. Writers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois celebrated their culture and demanded equality through art.
Newspapers such as The Chicago Defender and The Pittsburgh Courier united the community and encouraged migration and activism.
President Woodrow Wilson’s Betrayal
If there is a Darth Vader in this story, it is Woodrow Wilson.
When Wilson was elected in 1912, many Black Americans had high hopes. He was a Democrat (most Blacks were still Republicans) but also a former president of Princeton University and spoke of moral leadership and fairness.
Prominent Black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and clergy in the African Methodist Episcopal Church supported him, believing he would soften the racial hostility of the post-Reconstruction South and appoint qualified Black professionals to federal positions — as Republican presidents had done for decades.
But almost immediately after taking office, Wilson’s administration betrayed those expectations.
Before Wilson, federal workplaces in Washington D.C. were among the few places in America where Black and white employees worked side by side. Wilson’s cabinet changed that.
His Postmaster General (Albert Burleson) and Treasury Secretary (William McAdoo) introduced segregation into federal offices—separate work areas, restrooms, and cafeterias for Black employees.
Some Black civil servants were demoted, dismissed, or forced to work behind screens so white workers “would not have to look at them.”
By 1914, many departments—Treasury, Navy, Post Office, and Interior—were completely segregated.
When a delegation led by William Monroe Trotter protested to Wilson in the White House, Wilson defended segregation as “protecting both races” (Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library).
Wilson, himself a historian of the South, had written in his earlier textbook History of the American People (1902) that Reconstruction governments were dominated by “an ignorant and inferior race.”
In 1915, Wilson screened D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation at the White House — the first film ever shown there. The film glorified the Ku Klux Klan as heroes who “redeemed” the South from Black political rule. The screening signaled White House approval of racist propaganda and contributed to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan later that year. Sources: Library of Congress film archives; David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868–1919 (Henry Holt, 1993); Congressional Record, 1915.
Wilson’s presidency entrenched segregation at the federal level, setting back decades of civil-service progress. As a result, Black employment in government dropped sharply. His administration’s policies legitimized Jim Crow nationally, giving cover to southern segregationists who claimed federal endorsement.
During World War I, Black soldiers served in segregated units and faced severe discrimination, both at home and abroad. But, when the war ended, returning Black veterans—trained, disciplined, and expecting equality—were met with hostility, sparking the Red Summer of 1919, a wave of racial violence across more than 25 cities.
Modern historians largely agree that Wilson is one of the most openly racist presidents of the 20th century and that his policies caused lasting damage to racial equality in the United States. His actions institutionalized segregation within federal agencies for decades—these practices were not formally dismantled until Franklin Roosevelt’s administration began hiring reforms in the 1940s.
Yet even in this dark era, Black Americans responded with the same pattern that defines their story: they organized, protested, founded their own institutions, and kept building.
More Service and Sacrifice
During WWII, more than one million Black Americans served in the U.S. military, fighting for a democracy that often denied them equal rights. Returning veterans demanded justice.
As a result, the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954) legally overturned segregation in schools. In addition, the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56), March on Washington (1963), and Civil Rights Act (1964) marked the culmination of a century of self-determination. These victories were built on churches, schools, newspapers, mutual aid networks, and family discipline going back generations.
Resilience
Across every generation from 1865 to 1965, one truth stands out: Black Americans were resilient.
When barred from schools, they built colleges.
When locked out of banks, they founded their own.
When silenced politically, they organized churches and newspapers.
When displaced, they migrated, rebuilt, and rose again.
There is much more to this story. But even this portion of the story, a portion that I did not know until recently, is a story worth knowing and telling. The moral is that evil may win battles, but good endures through faith and persistence. Instead of kings or Jedi, this story had teachers, farmers, preachers, and parents who built something lasting from brokenness. The strength and endurance demonstrated are not only part of the Black American story; it is a beautiful part of the American story.
Peace.
Sources and Further Reading:
Freedmen’s Bureau (1865–1872) — National Archives
Howard University History — Howard University Official Site
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (Harper & Row, 1988)
Eric S. Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service (University of North Carolina Press, 2013)
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum. “Race and Segregation Finding Aid.” presidentwilson.org/items/show/34251.
The President Woodrow Wilson House. “Wilson and Race.” woodrowwilsonhouse.org/wilson-topics/wilson-and-race.Lily White Movement — Cambridge University Press, Studies in American Political Development