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U.S. History

Harrison

Reconstruction Comes to the U.S. Constitution

14th Amendment (1867)

Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Questions: What is meant by "due process of law " and "equal protection"

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Questions: What is this portion of the 14th Amendment seeking to accomplish?

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Question: Why is it significant that Congress give itself this power to regulate?

15th Amendment (1870)

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Question: Why might this Amendment be so controversial? Why was the 15th Amendment needed given the 14th Amendment already existed?

****White Southern Response to Reconstruction****

Black Codes

Louisiana - “No Negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within the limits of the town under any circumstances… No Negro or freedman shall reside within the limits of the town… who is not in the regular service of some white person or former owner.”

“No freedman shall be allowed to carry any firearms, or any kind of weapon.”

“No freedman shall sell, barter, or exchange any article of merchandise within the limits of Opelousas without permission in writing from his employer.”

“Every adult freed man or woman shall furnish themselves with a comfortable home and visible means of support within twenty days after the passage of this act” and anyone failing to do so “shall be immediately arrested by any sheriff or constable and hired out to some citizen being the highest bidder, for the remainder of the year.”

What are the methods used by Southern governments to restrict the rights of African-Americans?

KKK

Sharecropping

Question - What is the nature of Sharecropping in the South based in the image below?

Voting Restrictions

  • Poll Tax
  • Property qualification – few blacks were prosperous enough to meet such a requirement
  • Literacy / “Understanding” Tests
  • Required voters to demonstrate an ability to read and to interpret the constitution
  • Tests applied unevenly – literacy tests for whites were often much easier
  • Grandfather Laws
  • Permitted men who could not meet the property requirement or literacy test to vote if their ancestors had voted before Reconstruction began