Reconstruction Era

1
Reconstruction Era

• The Decades of Disappointment

2
The Freedmen BureauEst. 1865

• A federal agency intended to help African
  Americans acquire training and to gain rights
  denied to them under slavery.
• Establish schooling for African Americans
• Provide a court of law where a black person could
  legally testify
• Negotiate fair labor contracts
• Family services, aiding African Americans in
  finding lost family members

3
Freedman Bureau

• Had little impact because
• Not enough funding
• Poor organization
• Opposition from conservatives
• Apathy of southerners
• Bureau was disbanded in 1872

4
Civil Rights Act of 1866

• Passed over President Johnsons veto
• Declared all persons born in U.S. citizens
  regardless of their previous condition (including
  race and color)
• Allowed these citizens to make and enforce
  contracts, sue and be sued, inherit, lease,
  purchase property
• Denying these rights resulted in one being guilty
  of a misdemeanor and facing fines and prison

5
Civil Rights Act of 1875

• Established to guarantee African Americans equal
  treatment in public places and transportation
• Last effort by Congress to protect rights of
  African Americans for more than half a century
• Later declared unconstitutional by Supreme Court

6
Important Acts

• 1865 13th Amendment
• 1868 14th Amendment
• 1870 15th Amendment

7
Other important events

• In 1867, Congress passed the first of a series
  of Reconstruction Acts, which sought to prevent
  laws set up in the south to limit the freedoms of
  ex-slaves.
• Barred southern states from participating in
  Congress until they revised their state
  constitutions
• Each act was passed over the veto of President
  Johnson
• The 1867 Republican convention introduces a party
  platform that includes civil rights
• By 1871, the U.S. House of Representatives
  included five black members
• 1875, Blanche Kelso of Mississippi became the
  first black Senator to serve a full 6 year term

8
So, much of this sounds like progress . . .

• But what happened?
• Wade Hampton, a former leader in the Confederacy,
  is elected governor of South Carolina in 1876
• Another sign of trouble the election of 1876 .
  . .

9
Results of 1876 election

• Rutherford B. Hayes (Rep)
• 4,036,572 votes (185 electoral)
• Samuel J. Tilden (Dem)
• 4,284,020 votes (184 electoral)

10
1876 election cont.

• Results of the election led to the Compromise of
  1877.
• This officially ended Reconstruction by
  eliminating the threat of a Democratic filibuster
  in exchange for removing from the South what
  amounted to an occupying army

11
With the end of Reconstruction, what happened?

• Hate groups had free reign to gather under the
  old Confederate flag (KKK est. by ex-Confederate
  soldiers in 1865)
• Lynchings, burnings, murders
• Jim Crow Laws
• Tenant Farmer systems
• Black Codes

12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
(No Transcript)
20
1981 lynching of Michael Donald
21
The Race Problem

• What was the best way to integrate newly
  liberated African Americans into American way of
  life?
• What kind of education?
• What kind of opportunities?
• What kind of societal aid?
• What would YOU have done?