Finally, in many places, white local government officials simply prevented potential voters from registering. By , the percentage of eligible African-American voters registered in the South was only three percent. As evidence of the decline, during Reconstruction, the percentage of African-American voting-age men registered to vote was more than 90 percent.
African Americans faced social, commercial, and legal discrimination. Theatres, hotels, and restaurants segregated them in inferior accommodations or refused to admit them at all. Shops served them last. It listed establishments where African-American travelers could expect to receive unprejudiced service. Segregated public schools meant generations of African-American children often received an education designed to be inferior to that of whites—with worn-out or outdated books, underpaid teachers, and lesser facilities and materials.
In , the Supreme Court declared discrimination in education unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , but it would take another 10 years for Congress to restore full civil rights to minorities, including protections for the right to vote.
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You cannot download interactives. The AERA was split over whether Black male suffrage should take precedence over universal suffrage, given the political climate of the South. Frances Harper, for example, a freeborn Black woman living in Ohio, urged them to consider their own privilege as white and middle class. Universal suffrage, she argued, would not so clearly address the complex difficulties posed by racial, economic, and gender inequality. Her name can be seen at the top of this petition to extend suffrage to all regardless of sex, which was present to Congress on January 29, It did not pass, and women would not gain the vote for more than half a century after Stanton and others signed this petition.
Petition of E. Cady Stanton, Susan B. National Archives and Records Administration. These divisions came to a head early in , as the AERA organized a campaign in Kansas to determine the fate of Black and woman suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her partner in the movement, Susan B. Anthony, made the journey to advocate universal suffrage. These tensions finally erupted over conflicting views of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Although it established national citizenship for all persons born or naturalized in the United States, the amendment also introduced the word male into the Constitution for the first time. After the Fifteenth Amendment ignored sex as an unlawful barrier to suffrage, an omission that appalled Stanton, the AERA officially dissolved. This new approach interpreted the Constitution as already guaranteeing women the right to vote. Broadcasting the New Departure, the NWSA encouraged women to register to vote, which roughly seven hundred did between and Anthony was one of them and was arrested but then acquitted in trial.
Following this defeat, many suffragists like Stanton increasingly replaced the ideal of universal suffrage with arguments about the virtue that white women would bring to the polls. These new arguments often hinged on racism and declared the necessity of white women voters to keep Black men in check.
The lines between refined white womanhood and degraded enslaved Black femaleness were no longer so clearly defined. While white southern women decided whether and how to return to their prior status, African American women embraced new freedoms and a redefinition of womanhood. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited discrimination in voting rights on the basis of race, color, or previous status i. While the amendment was not all-encompassing in that women were not included, it was an extremely significant ruling in affirming the liberties of African American men.
This print depicts a huge parade held in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 19, , surrounded by portraits of abolitionists and scenes of African Americans exercising their rights. Thomas Kelly after James C. Beard, The 15th Amendment. Celebrated May 19th , Many did not like what they saw, especially given the possibility of racial equality. Formerly wealthy women hoped to maintain their social status by rebuilding the prewar social hierarchy.
Proponents of the Lost Cause tried to rewrite the history of the antebellum South to deemphasize the brutality of slavery. LMAs and their ceremonies created new holidays during which white southerners could reaffirm their allegiance to the Confederacy and express their opposition to Black rights.
Southern Black women also sought to redefine their public and private lives. Their efforts to control their labor met the immediate opposition of southern white women. Gertrude Clanton, a plantation mistress before the war, disliked cooking and washing dishes, so she hired an African American woman to do the washing.
A misunderstanding quickly developed. Meanwhile, this washerwoman and others like her set wages and hours for themselves, and in many cases began to take washing into their own homes in order to avoid the surveillance of white women and the sexual threat posed by white men.
Similar conflicts raged across the South. White southerners demanded that African American women work in the plantation home and instituted apprenticeship systems to place African American children in unpaid labor positions. African American women combated these attempts by refusing to work at jobs without fair pay or fair conditions and by clinging tightly to their children. Like white LMA members, African American women formed clubs to bury their dead, to celebrate African American masculinity, and to provide aid to their communities.
On May 1, , African Americans in Charleston created the precursor to the modern Memorial Day by mourning the Union dead buried hastily on a race track turned prison. African American women continued participating in federal Decoration Day ceremonies and, later, formed their own club organizations. Racial violence, whether city riots or rural vigilantes, continued to threaten these vulnerable households.
Nevertheless, the formation and preservation of African American households became a paramount goal for African American women.
For all of their differences, white and Black southern women faced a similar challenge during Reconstruction. Southern women celebrated the return of their brothers, husbands, and sons, but couples separated for many years struggled to adjust. To make matters worse, many of these former soldiers returned with physical or mental wounds.
For white families, suicide and divorce became more acceptable, while the opposite occurred for Black families. Since the entire South suffered from economic devastation, many families were impoverished and sank into debt. All southern women faced economic devastation, lasting wartime trauma, and enduring racial tensions.
Violence shattered the dream of biracial democracy. Still steeped in the violence of slavery, white southerners could scarcely imagine Black free labor. In the post-emancipation period it was used to stifle Black advancement and return to the old order. Much of life in the antebellum South had been premised on slavery. The social order rested on a subjugated underclass, and the labor system required unfree laborers. A notion of white supremacy and Black inferiority undergirded it all.
White people were understood as fit for freedom and citizenship, Black people for chattel slave labor. Congress of the Thirteenth Amendment destroyed the institution of American slavery and threw southern society into disarray. The foundation of southern society had been shaken, but southern whites used Black Codes and racial terrorism to reassert control over formerly enslaved people.
The Ku Klux Klan was just one of a number of vigilante groups that arose after the war to terrorize African Americans and Republicans throughout the South.
Racial violence in the Reconstruction period took three major forms: riots against Black political authority, interpersonal fights, and organized vigilante groups. There were riots in southern cities several times during Reconstruction. The most notable were the riots in Memphis and New Orleans in , but other large-scale urban conflicts erupted in places including Laurens, South Carolina, in ; Colfax, Louisiana, in ; another in New Orleans in ; Yazoo City, Mississippi, in ; and Hamburg, South Carolina, in Southern cities grew rapidly after the war as migrants from the countryside—particularly freed people—flocked to urban centers.
Cities became centers of Republican control. But white conservatives chafed at the influx of Black residents and the establishment of biracial politics. In nearly every conflict, white conservatives initiated violence in reaction to Republican rallies or conventions or elections in which Black men were to vote. The death tolls of these conflicts remain incalculable, and victims were overwhelmingly Black. Even everyday violence between individuals disproportionally targeted African Americans during Reconstruction.
African Americans gained citizenship rights like the ability to serve on juries as a result of the Civil Rights Act of and the Fourteenth Amendment.
But southern white men were almost never prosecuted for violence against Black victims. White men beat or shot Black men with relative impunity, and did so over minor squabbles, labor disputes, long-standing grudges, and crimes of passion. The violence committed by organized vigilante groups, sometimes called nightriders or bushwhackers, was more often premeditated. Groups of nightriders operated under cover of darkness and wore disguises to curtail Black political involvement. Nightriders harassed and killed Black candidates and officeholders and frightened voters away from the polls.
They also aimed to limit Black economic mobility by terrorizing freedpeople who tried to purchase land or otherwise become too independent from the white enslavers they used to rely on. They were terrorists and vigilantes, determined to stop the erosion of the antebellum South, and they were widespread and numerous, operating throughout the South.
The Ku Klux Klan emerged in the late s as the most infamous of these groups. The Klan drew heavily from the antebellum southern elite, but Klan groups sometimes overlapped with criminal gangs or former Confederate guerrilla groups. While it is difficult to differentiate Klan actions from those of similar groups, such as the White Line, the Knights of the White Camellia, and the White Brotherhood, the distinctions hardly matter.
All such groups were part of a web of terror that spread throughout the South during Reconstruction. And nearby, in Lafayette County, Klansmen drowned thirty Black Mississippians in a single mass murder. Sometimes the violence was aimed at Black men or women who had tried to buy land or dared to be insolent toward a white southerner. Numerous Republican politicians, perhaps dozens, were killed, either while in office or while campaigning.
Thousands of individual citizens, men and women, white and Black, had their homes raided and were whipped, raped, or murdered. The federal government responded to southern paramilitary tactics by passing the Enforcement Acts between and The acts made it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights.
The acts also deemed violent Klan behavior as acts of rebellion against the United States and allowed for the use of U. For a time, the federal government, its courts, and its troops, sought to put an end to the KKK and related groups. But the violence continued. National attention shifted away from the South and the activities of the Klan, but African Americans remained trapped in a world of white supremacy that restricted their economic, social, and political rights.
Soon the Bureau and the federal government would recognize that they could not accomplish a fraction of what they set out to do, including keeping African Americans safe and free in the South. The violence, according to many white conservatives, was fabricated, or not as bad as it was claimed, or an unavoidable consequence of the enfranchisement of African Americans.
On December 22, , R. Did the Ku Klux do wrong? You are ready to say they did and we will not argue the point with you. Under the peculiar circumstances what could the people of South Carolina do but resort to Ku Kluxing?
Victims and witnesses to the violence told a different story. Sallie Adkins of Warren County, Georgia, was traveling with her husband, Joseph, a Georgia state senator, when he was assassinated by Klansmen on May 10, She wrote President Ulysses S. Grant, asking for both physical protection and justice. But I feel that I have claims upon my country.
The Rebels imprisoned my Husband. Pardoned Rebels murdered him. There is no law for the punishment of them who do deeds of this sort. I demand that you, President Grant, keep the pledge you made the nation—make it safe for any man to utter boldly and openly his devotion to the United States.
The political and social consequences of the violence were as lasting as the physical and mental trauma suffered by victims and witnesses. Terrorism worked to end federal involvement in Reconstruction and helped to usher in a new era of racial repression. African Americans actively sought ways to shed the vestiges of slavery. Others resettled far from their former plantations, hoping to eventually farm their own land or run their own businesses.
By the end of Reconstruction, the desire for self-definition, economic independence, and racial pride coalesced in the founding of dozens of Black towns across the South. Residents of the town took pride in the fact that African Americans owned all of the property in town, including banks, insurance companies, shops, and the surrounding farms.
The town celebrated African American cultural and economic achievements during their annual festival, Mound Bayou Days. These tight-knit communities provided African Americans with spaces where they could live free from the indignities of segregation and the exploitation of sharecropping on white-owned plantations. George N. Barnard, City of Atlanta, Ga. The Civil War destroyed and then transformed the American economy. In and , wealthy southern planters were flush after producing record cotton crops.
Southern prosperity relied on over four million enslaved African American to grow cotton, along with a number of other staple crops across the region. Cotton fed the textile mills of America and Europe and brought great wealth to the region. On the eve of war, the American South enjoyed more per capita wealth than any other slave economy in the New World.
In contrast to the slave South, northerners praised their region as a land of free labor, populated by farmers, merchants, and wage laborers. It was also home to a robust market economy. By , northerners could buy clothing made in a New England factory, or light their homes with kerosene oil from Pennsylvania.
The Midwest produced seas of grain that fed the country, with enough left over for export to Europe. Farther west, mining and agriculture were the mainstays of life. An extensive network of banks and financial markets helped aggregate capital that could be reinvested into further growth. The Civil War, like all wars, interrupted the rhythms of commercial life by destroying lives and property. This was especially true in the South. Therefore, he decided to give the vote to freedmen in order to strengthen his support at the polls.
Accordingly, in February , the Tennessee General Assembly declared its support for giving voting rights to African American males. This came two years before Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment.
With the help of African American voters, Brownlow and his slate of candidates swept to victory in the elections. A slate of candidates is a group of political candidates who share a set of political views. Vigilantes are people who use violence to enforce the rules or laws of their society.
In this case, the Klansmen wanted to enforce the pre-Civil War rules that denied rights to African Americans. These groups were made up largely of ex-Confederates. Their goal was to intimidate the African American voters by attacking their homes and families. Many former Confederates joined the Ku Klux Klan because it was the only political organization open to them while Brownlow was governor.
In , Brownlow was selected to fill a seat in the United States Senate. With Brownlow gone, the Klansmen saw a path back to political power. The group officially disbanded in but would be revived in the early twentieth century. However, once Senter took office, he allowed ex-Confederates to register to vote. As a result of their support, Senter easily won the governorship in the election of Seven times as many Tennesseans voted in than in In , delegates from across the state met to rewrite the state Constitution.
While the delegates were mostly conservatives, they were careful to write a constitution that would allow Tennessee to avoid Federal military occupation. Delegates ratified the abolition of slavery and voting rights for freedmen but limited voter participation by enacting a poll tax. A poll tax is a tax that must be paid before a person can vote.
Political reconstruction effectively ended in Tennessee with the rewriting of the Constitution, but the struggle over the civil and economic rights of black freedmen had just begun. After the war, African Americans faced more difficulties than most other Tennesseans. Many freedmen left the plantations and rural communities for urban areas such as Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville looking for work and a chance to improve their lives. Freedmen also fled the countryside to escape the violence of groups like the Klan.
These newcomers settled near military encampments where black troops were stationed. In time, an African American professional and business class developed in the cities. Freedmen responded enthusiastically to the new schools, and a number of colleges—Fisk, Tennessee Central, LeMoyne, Roger Williams, Lane, and Knoxville—were soon founded to meet the demand for higher education. Most African Americans in the countryside were laborers or tenant farmers. In the future, Tennessee freedmen had to rely on themselves and their own leaders to advance their goals.
African Americans were politically active and exercised their newfound legal rights even after the Radical Republicans lost power in They brought suits in the county courts, filed wills, and ran for local elected offices, particularly in the cities where they commanded strong voting blocs.
A voting bloc is a group of voters who share common concerns and therefore vote for the same candidates. Beginning with Sampson Keeble of Nashville in , thirteen black legislators were elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives. Much of their legislative work consisted of trying to protect the rights gained during Reconstruction. McElwee, Styles Hutchins, and Monroe Gooden, elected in , would be the last black lawmakers to serve in Tennessee until the s.
Once the Democrats regained political power, they began to reverse the movement towards racial equality. The Klan had enforced white supremacy with lynchings, beatings, and arson.
Lynchings are illegal executions usually carried out before the accused has a trial. Beginning in the s, the Legislature began to pass laws designed to make African Americans second-class citizens. Poll taxes and literacy tests targeted African American voters and greatly reduced the number of African Americans participating in the political system.
By the s, the Legislature demanded separate facilities for whites and blacks in public accommodations, like boarding houses, and on railroads. One young woman, Ida B. Wells later sued the railroad company and won in the lower courts, but the Tennessee State Supreme Court ruled against her.
Wells moved to Chicago and spent the rest of her life fighting for equality for African Americans and women. Former slave and Chattanooga newspaperman Randolph Miller also fought discrimination in Tennessee.
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