US history shows that progress towards racial equity has been met with violent backlash from whites trying to keep power

The US Capitol insurrection on January 6th was an attempt to maintain white supremacy, motivated by a fear of status loss. Megan Stewart and Karin Kitchens write that such violent reactions to maintain white supremacy are not new in the US. Examining data from the post-Civil War Reconstruction period of the 1860s and 1870s, they find that measures like the deployment of Union troops can be linked to increased literacy for Black persons, but also to an increase in the number of Black persons murdered by white lynch mobs threatened by fear of status loss.