# 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.