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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.
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