U.S. History & Government Groner

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U.S. History & Government Groner

Freedmen & Reconstruction

Before the Civil War, slavery supporters insisted that slavery was the only condition in which blacks could be happy. They maintained that the blacks of the South were the happiest people in the world and they would be miserable if they were set free to fend for themselves.

After the Civil War, the Louisiana white ruling class intended to maintain the pre-war living and working conditions of blacks. Cheap and docile labor was needed on cotton & sugar plantations. Even though the slaves were now free, most whites did not change their views that blacks were inferior intellectually & morally and that it was the right of whites to dominate their lives.

A sharecropping system was developed and employed former slaves and poor whites to work plots of land owned by a landlord. The landlord provided land, a house, work animals, tools and seed. At the end of the harvest season the crop was divided between the landlord and the sharecropper.

Before the harvest, the sharecropper could feed and clothe his family on credit from stores owned by the landlord. So even in years of good harvests, many families would be left destitute (very poor) after their debt to the store was paid.

The Louisiana Legislature passed laws that “bound” a sharecropper to his landlord until all debts were paid. Because of the inflated prices at plantation stores, many sharecropper families never got out of debt and remained virtual slaves.

The constitution of 1879 provided for a public school system for both blacks and whites. However, the school system was inadequately funded. Louisiana blacks had an illiteracy rate of over 70 percent for decades.

During the Reconstruction Era, blacks were registered to vote. And, for awhile, registered black voters outnumbered white voters. This situation presented a challenge to the white ruling class who did not want blacks to vote, but who also did not want to antagonize the federal government and cause more federal intervention in state affairs. Whites manipulated the voting system through voting commissioners who filed false results, and thereby controlled election outcomes. This was easy to do because of the high illiteracy rates among blacks.

In general, the conditions of blacks did not improve after the Civil War. The sharecropping replaced slavery, effectively binding a family to a landlord rather than to an owner. Schools were inadequately funded and therefore severely limited the educational opportunities for blacks. The voting system was manipulated to benefit the white ruling class.

After working along with other abolitionists for years to encourage emancipation of the slaves, Frederick Douglass, like others, felt that those who had helped bring down slavery had a responsibility to assist the newly freed population. Although much good was accomplished during Reconstruction, in the end the effort was abandoned for political expediency. The following is a quote from Frederick Douglass on the ultimate results of Reconstruction:

“You say you have emancipated us. You have; and I thank you for it. But what is your emancipation?...When you turned us loose, you gave us [nothing]. You turned us loose to the sky, to the storm, and, worst of all you turned us loose to the wrath of our infuriated masters.”

Sharecropping in the South

The Freedman’s Bureau

The Freedmen's Bureau was established as part of the U.S. War Department by an act of Congress in March 1865. Its purpose was to provide assistance to the freed slaves of the South after the Civil War. Originally created for one year, the bureau was continued in 1866 by Congress overriding the veto of President Andrew Johnson and was thereafter repeatedly extended. The Bureau supervised all relief and educational activities relating to freed slaves, including issuing rations, clothing and medicine.

Freedman’s schools taught African Americans, both young and old, how to read and write – a very important step to gaining their goal of economic independence. In the years after the war, African American groups raised more than $1 million for education. However, federal government and private groups in the North paid most of the cost of building schools and hiring teachers.

Many White Southerners were angered by the Freedman Bureau’s efforts to help freed slaves. White racists even killed teachers and burned freedman’s schools in parts of the South. Despite these setbacks, African Americans kept working hard toward an education.

Voting Restrictions

By the 1890s white Southerners had regained political power in the South. One of their goals was to control black voters; another was to regulate the lives of Southern blacks. Southern states used a number of different methods to keep blacks from practicing their 15th Amendment right (the right to vote). Some states passed laws requiring literacy tests – anyone who failed these test could not vote. Some states also charged a poll tax (pay to vote) – since most blacks in the South were poor they could not afford to vote.

The literacy test and the poll tax often kept poor and uneducated whites from voting as well. To solve this problem, states added a grandfather clause to their States Constitutions. The clause stated that neither literacy tests nor poll taxes applied to persons who themselves or whose grandfather could vote on or before January 1, 1867 (BEFORE the 15th Amendment was passed). This clause allowed for most whites to vote without the literacy test or poll tax.

Black Codes

Black Codes was a name given to laws passed by southern governments established during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. These laws imposed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations.

Mississippi Black Codes

" Whenever it was required of them they must present licenses (in a town from the mayor; elsewhere from a member of the board of police of the beat) citing their places of residence and authorizing them to work. Fugitives from labor were to be arrested and carried back to their employers. Five dollars a head and mileage would be allowed such negro catchers. It was made a misdemeanor, punishable with fine or imprisonment, to persuade a freedman to leave his employer, or to feed the runaway. Minors were to be apprenticed, if males until they were twenty-one, if females until eighteen years of age. Such corporal punishment as a father would administer to a child might be inflicted upon apprentices by their masters. Vagrants were to be fined heavily, and if they could not pay the sum, they were to be hired out to service until the claim was satisfied. Negroes might not carry knives or firearms unless they were licensed so to do. It was an offence, to be punished by a fine of $50 and imprisonment for thirty days, to give or sell intoxicating liquors to a negro. When negroes could not pay the fines and costs after legal proceedings, they were to be hired at public outcry by the sheriff to the lowest bidder...."

Jim Crow Laws

Starting in the 1890s, states throughout the South passed laws designed to prevent Black citizens from improving their status or achieving equality. These statutes, which together were known as Jim Crow, were in place and enforced until the 1950s and 60s. Here is a sampling of those laws, grouped by topic.

EDUCATION

Florida: The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately.

Kentucky: The children of white and colored races committed to reform schools shall be kept entirely separate from each other.

Mississippi: Separate schools shall be maintained for the children of the white and colored races.

Mississippi: Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school.

New Mexico: Separate rooms shall be provided for the teaching of pupils of African descent, and such pupils may not be admitted to the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian or other descent.

North Carolina: School textbooks shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.

ENTERTAINMENT

Alabama: It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided.

Alabama: It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards.

Alabama: Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities.

Georgia: All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or under the same license.

Georgia: It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race.

Georgia: All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine...shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room at any time.

Louisiana: All circuses, shows, and tent exhibitions, to which the attendance of more than one race is invited shall provide not less than two ticket offices and not less than two entrances.

Virginia: Any public hall, theatre, opera house, motion picture show or place of public entertainment which is attended by both white and colored persons shall separate the white race and the colored race.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Mississippi: Any person guilty of printing, publishing or circulating matter urging or presenting arguments in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

HEALTH CARE

Alabama: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed.

Louisiana: The board of trustees shall maintain a separate building, on separate grounds, for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race.

The Klan is Born

From the beginning of Reconstruction, an organization known as the Ku Klux Klan began terrorizing much of the South. The organization began as a social club for ex-confederate soldiers from the poverty stricken town of Pulaski, Tennessee. Starting with just six members, its numbers grew rapidly as Southerners attempted to regain control of the South.

General Robert E. Lee had initially been asked to lead the organization, but declined because he was in poor health. The ex-Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest then became the first “Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire.” The name, initially “Kuklos Klan” was given to the group by Forrest and is a mixture of Greek and Scottish words meaning “Family Circle.” Originally, only Civil War veterans who had been honorably discharged or had been in Union prisons at the war’s end were eligible for membership in the Klan.

The Civil War may have been officially over, but there remained pockets of resistance throughout the South. Much of this resistance came from the Klan. Blacks, Republicans and Northerners were originally their targets. At night, the white sheeted Klansmen road through the streets creating mayhem. By day, they were dentists, doctors, businessmen, policemen, and even ministers.

Anti-Klan laws were enacted to put an end to the organization and their reign of terror. There was limited success, however, and most of the efforts failed to obtain significant results. Several laws were even eventually overturned by the Supreme Court and were declared unconstitutional.

Lynching in America

Lynching did not come out of nowhere. Its actual and symbolic grounding in history and literature goes back to slavery and slavery's defining persons of African descent as property. During slavery there were numerous public punishments of slaves, none of which were preceded by trials or any other semblance of civil or judicial processes. Justice depended solely upon the slaveholder. Executions, whippings, brandings, and other forms of severe punishment, including sometimes the public separation of families, were at the command of the master. Often, slaves from the plantation and, sometimes, nearby plantations were assembled and made to witness the punishment as an example of the master's absolute authority to wield the power of life and death over each and every slave. Underlying this action was the idea that black slaves were not truly human beings or, if human, certainly not equal or endowed with any right to life or liberty beyond what their owners saw fit to grant.

The lynching of Black people in the Southern and Border States became an institutionalized method used by whites to terrorize African-Americans and maintain white supremacy. Mainly in the South, during the period 1880 to 1940, there was deep-seated and all-pervading hatred and fear of the Negro which led white mobs to turn to “lynch law” as a means of social control. Lynching, open public murders of individuals suspected of crime conceived and carried out spontaneously by a mob seem to have been an American invention.

Most of the lynching was by hanging or shooting, or both. However, many were of a more hideous nature, burning at the stake, maiming, dismemberment, castration, and other brutal methods of physical torture. Lynching was a cruel combination of racism and sadism, which was utilized primarily to sustain the caste system in the South. Many white people believed that Negroes could only be controlled by fear. To them, lynching was seen as the most effective means of control.