From “Redemption” to “Jim Crow North”: The <i>New York Times</i> , its first columnist, and the legacy of Reconstruction

This research documents how the New York Times and its first columnist, Arthur Krock, supported white supremacy and racial hierarchy during the Great Migration, when Black citizens fleeing the Jim Crow South confronted new forms of discrimination in an emerging “Jim Crow North.” Like Times owner Adolph Ochs, Krock was a southern sympathizer who loathed federal support for Black voting rights after the Civil War. This research shows how the Times and its first columnist employed partisan and racist histories of Reconstruction to shape debates and influence policy on race and citizenship during the first half of the twentieth century, when the newspaper emerged as the nation’s most prestigious news source.