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authorHolden Rohrer <hr@hrhr.dev>2020-08-21 15:52:44 -0400
committerHolden Rohrer <hr@hrhr.dev>2020-08-21 15:52:44 -0400
commit338491f89d6a3c01adc4251fa45597dbad32e44b (patch)
tree7f32053140df938f0a69c6933dec21b012ee6e96 /smith
parent2e9fe73a112cc4597eea8f69a7c91b57409c515a (diff)
color line lecture, no reflection
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+# Post-civil war and Reconstruction (1865-1877)
+
+The course starts in 1877, after Reconstruction of the South after the
+Civil War.
+- How did reconstruction and happen and "what challenges did the federal
+government face?"
+- How did white and black southerners respond?
+- What factors led to the end of Reconstruction in 1877?
+- Why did white southerners create segregation laws after
+ Reconstruction?
+
+W.E.B. DuBois
+ - black scholar, author, thinker, and civil rights activist
+ - Wrote "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903)
+ - "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color
+ line."
+ - Race and segregation are the defining issues in America
+ - Civil ideal
+ - Racial ideal (?)
+ - White supremacy won at the time
+ - Whites feared losing economic, political, social power to
+ black Americans.
+ - Rooted in slavery and a fear of black people competing.
+ - Segregation failed to maintain a social order (why?)
+
+White southerners viewed Civil War loss as a temporary setback in
+challenging blacks' freedoms.
+ - Slave-owners refused to free their slaves
+ - Whites resisted reconstruction
+
+Government attempted to make new freed men self-reliant as white
+southerners fought back against union occupation of the south and
+Reconstruction. About two questions:
+ - Who deserves citizenship and freedoms?
+ - What rights should all Americans enjoy?
+
+Southern land value and resources crashed, while northern soldiers
+confiscated this value.
+The end of slavery caused a labor crisis---how would freedmen be
+employed?
+ - "Freedmen's Bureau" (1865-1870) helped connect family members and
+ developed black freedmen's schools and work.
+ - Government authorized giving/renting confiscated land to
+ freedmen, but many officials corrupt.
+ - So whites used contracts with freedmen to maintain their own
+ power.
+ - Southern whites pressured Congress into shuttering Freedmen's
+ Bureau
+ - And continuing under-resourced schooling for blacks.
+
+Amendments ratified by all states (including by Southern states, which
+were required to ratify on condition of admission into the union):
+13th Amendment (1865)
+ - Abolished slavery
+14th Amendment (1868)
+ - Guaranteed citizenship to natural US citizens, except Natives
+ - States couldn't deny equal protection of laws.
+15th Amendment (1870)
+ - Guaranteed all men voting rights
+ - Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were suffragists
+ who wanted women voting rights, and supported abolition but
+ did not support black men's voting rights.
+
+Black people support Republican party and make up largest Southern
+constituency.
+White Democrats maintain power in the South after reconstruction.
+
+600 black men served as state legislators *during* reconstruction
+2 black senators and 14 black people in house.
+
+Slave codes -> black codes.
+ - Reduce black empowerment by allowing whites and white authorities
+ to sentence black people into forced labor and road workers for
+ undocumented employment or "disorderliness"
+
+KKK burned black homes, churches, meeting places to suppress their vote
+and intimidate black communities. Also attacked white Republicans.
+ "Redeemers" restored white power.
+
+Election of 1876
+- Republican Gov. of Ohio: Rutherford B Hayes
+- Dem. Gov. of NY: Samuel J Tilden
+
+Both Republicans and Dems claim victory because of disputed electoral
+votes (from Southern states).
+ - Likely fraud on both sides
+ - 15 person federal commission to decide election. All vote along
+ party lines, and 8-7 declare Hayes the winner.
+ - Dem states don't contest this vote in exchange for compromise.
+
+The Compromise of 1877
+- Ends Reconstruction
+- End occupation of the South
+- Build Texas and Pacific Railroad to aid Texas growth
+- Southerner as Postmaster General (why did they want this?
+ suppression?)
+- Funds to rebuild Southern economy
+- "The solution to "the race problem" will be left to the southern state
+ governments"
+
+WEB DuBois calls reconstruction a failure.
+
+PART TWO
+
+Southerners embraced nostalgic idea of pre-Civil War South with
+slave-grown wealth, strong family values, and the idea that the Civil
+War was a noble fight against an oppressive federal government.
+"The past isn't dead. It's not even past." -- Faulkner
+Grady, editor of Atlanta Constitution looks forward to New South:
+- Fair democracy
+- Small farms, mills, factories
+- Mixed industrialization and agri. growth.
+South doesn't achieve this.
+
+Sharecropping, disenfranchisement, lynching did their best to maintain
+slavery-like social order.
+- Constant debt because poor blacks didn't have assets (land, tools,
+ supplies, food)
+ - Debt peonage
+
+Jim Crow laws
+- White supremacy and "negrophobia"
+- Social segregation
+- Send message of inferiority to black people and deprive them of
+ privelege.
+- States (MS, LA, GA) disenfranchised blacks to 3%:
+ - Poll taxes
+ - Grandfather clauses
+ - Property requirements or constitution knowledge or literacy
+ - Also 1/4 white voters
+ - Attacks by KKK and others
+
+1896:
+ LA passes separate cars act, requiring equal but separate
+ racial segregation
+ "Necessary to prevent danger of friction of interaction between
+ races"
+
+Plessy: 1/8 black, 7/8 white
+ As a defendant, his lawyer frames case as the right of state to
+ declare him as white or black (not about quality).
+ LA SC declares intrastate rail travel jurisdiction of state.
+ Fed. SC upholds this under "separate but equal"
+ John Marshall dissents on basis of stigmatizing and ignoring
+ color-blindness/castlessness of constitution. A badge of slavery
+
+Jim Crow also:
+ - banned black gun ownership
+ - prevented interracial marrying
+ - allowed white mobs to control black existence with segregation
+
+Lynchmobs: 3500, mostly in 1890s.
+ - Based in a deep fear of "black hypersexuality"---black people
+ attacking white women and undermining system of white supremacy
+ - Often run by well-respected members of the community, but even
+ poor whites participated, declaring alliance with other classes.
+
+Ida B. Wells
+ - Born into slavery
+ - Helped schools
+ - Believed blacks should protest white violence
+ - Against lynching
+ - Refused to give up railcar seat to white man.
+ - Sues railroad company for throwing her from the train
+ - Civil Rights act of 1875 banned discrimination in public acm.
+ - TN SC overturns lower court ruling in her favor
+
+The People's Grocery Store
+- Black-owned grocery store prospered at expense of white-owned
+ competitors
+- Owners kidnapped ("arrested" by white officers) and shot dead by white
+ men.
+- Ida B Wells writes about this
+ - Denounced lynching
+ - Debunked idea that black men raped white women
+ - Threatened by white terrorists
+
+Booker T Washington
+- At a time that response to racial inequality was still being
+ determined
+- Established Tuskegee Institute, entirely staffed by black people.
+- Believed that black people should develop skills as farmers, artisans,
+ shopkeepers because white people needed black people and that this
+ would earn their respect in the New South.
+ - Accommodationist: wanted to work in the system
+ - Praised by white politicians and whites thought that industrial
+ education would keep blacks in their place
+ - Many of his critics thought the same thing
+- Atlanta Compromise Speech
+ - Supported appeasing white leaders because then the leaders would
+ declare an end to racial violence.
+ - Appeasement in form of segregation ("separate as the five
+ fingers")
+- WEB DuBois major critic
+ - Rejected accommodation
+ - Believed in confrontation
+ - Helped found NAACP with Ida B Wells
+ - Boycotts, lawsuits to become equal
+ - Argued that Washington's accommodation would maintain a slave-like
+ system, and believes that political power leads to economic power.
+
+WEB DuBois, NAACP
+- Cooperated with white people
+- Criminalize lynching
+- Booker T Washington secretly funded confrontationist lawsuits.