Nadir of American race relations

The nadir of American race relations is a historical period defined by Rayford Logan as encompassing the worst time for race relations in the United States after the Civil War, which ended slavery. This period coincided with the Gilded Age, and includes the legal solidification of Jim Crow laws after the Reconstruction era, as well as the rise of lynchings and racial massacres. Its exact date range is not uniform amongst historians.

Logan determined in his 1954 book The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901 as the period when "the Negro's status in American society" reached its lowest point. He argued for 1901 as its end, suggesting that race relations improved after that year; other historians, such as John Hope Franklin and Henry Arthur Callis, argued for dates as late as 1923. References to a nadir continued to be used; most notably, it is used in books by James W. Loewen as recently as 2006, and it is also used in books by other scholars. Loewen chooses later dates, arguing that the post-Reconstruction era was in fact one of widespread hope for racial equity due to idealistic Northern support for civil rights. In Loewen's view, the true nadir only began when Northern Republicans ceased supporting Southern Blacks' rights around 1890, and it lasted until the American entry into World War II in 1941. This period followed the financial Panic of 1873 and a continuing decline in cotton prices. It overlapped with both the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and was characterized by the nationwide sundown town phenomenon.

Logan's focus was exclusively on African Americans in the Southern United States, but the time period which he covered also represents the worst period of anti-Chinese discrimination and wider anti-Asian discrimination which was due to fear of the so-called Yellow Peril, which included harassment and violence on the West Coast of the United States and the destruction of Chinatown, Denver.