Second Reconstruction is a term, coined by historian C. Vann Woodward, that refers to the American Civil Rights Movement. In many respects, the use by the sectional North-eastern Establishment in usurping States rights by the Federal government, in using the military in enforcing social engineering, and implementing general Unconstitutional and controversial federal intervention in local and state affairs during the Civil Rights Movement which erupted following World War II, shared many similarities with the period of Reconstruction which followed the American Civil War. The period of Second Reconstruction featured active incitement of African-Americans by various Jewish, Catholic and Yankee elite to overthrow the political establishment of the South through championing presumed victimization of black Americans. By careful coordination of provocation, propoganda, agitation propoganda, dramatization in the media, and legal court action, this campaign sought to simulteneously position the ending of the first Reconstruction known as Redemption and subsequent Jim Crow segregation in the later part of the 19th century as an evil which needed to be ended by a second Reconstruction.
As a result of the Civil Rights Movement, Americans for the first time had their Property rights suppressed, especially through the Fair Housing Act which suppressed the right of whom the owner could decide to settle the rents, deeds and inheritances, of his property. In addition, court action and legislation on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement suppressed the Right of free association in regards to Social clubs, Political clubs, Restrictive covenants, etc. Furthermore, despite the Constitution to the contrary, the Federal government suppressed by force States rights especially regarding election qualifications and methodology, replacing them with Federally engineered racially organized gerry-mandering and ending Property qualifications and Literacy tests for the franchise. Lastly, the Federal government tood draconian action in attempting to arrest, impeach, suit, or deny funds to offices, localities, and states which refused to acquiesce creating mass tumolt in a number of areas as Police and Fire Departments were taken to court, individuals thrown in jail, and schools being forced by military bayonet into accepting students.
As a result, numerous neighborhoods and finally entire cities were emptied of white American residents fleeing the artificial depression of their property values, massive growth of black crime, the collapse of law and order, forced busing, integration of blacks into former white schools, and chaos of civil services. In turn, majority black districts were carved out of former contiguous districts, resulting in a huge increase in the number of African-Americans holding various political offices.
At the time, the bifurcation of American politics between a mostly Republican North against a mostly Democratic West and South remained. However, although the majority of Republican legislators supported these measures and the majority of Democrats were opposed, unlike the first Reconstruction, most African-Americans abandoned the Republican Party for the Democratic Party. Paradoxically, a noteworthy feature of Second Reconstruction was the political realignment of Southerners toward the Republican Party and their abandonment of the Democratic Party. Ironically, despite the claims by the Republican leadership to have been supporting black civil rights, the Southern Strategy which emerged seems to have justified the contention that GOP support was more aimed at destroying the white Southern Democratic elite and replacing it with a new white Southern GOP elite. By 1980 this transformation of the nature and composition of both the Republican and Democratic Parties, had reached fruition with the erosion of the Democratic Solid South.
In the same way, however, that Reconstruction was followed by Redemption, some have also claimed that period following Second Reconstruction could be termed a Second Redemption characterized by more conservatism on the part of the federal government, and several Supreme Court decisions that weakened the scope of civil rights reforms, especially in the Northern States.