African American Reconstruction Essay

The Americans of African and European Ancestry did not have a very good relationship during the Civil war. They were a major cause of the Civil War. But, did they fix or rebuild that relationship after the war from the years 1865 to 1900? My opinion would be no. I do not believe that the Americans of African and European ancestry successfully rebuilt their relationship right after the Civil war. Even though slavery was finally slowly getting abolished, there was still much discrimination against the African Americans. The Jim Crow laws and the black codes discriminated against black people. The Ku Klux Klan in particular discriminated against black people. Even though the United States government tried to put laws into the Constitution to protect black people, the African Americans were discriminated in every aspect of life from housing, working, educating, and even going to public restrooms!
The United States did not just ignore the problem between the blacks and the whites in America. First of all after the Civil war, the United States made it so states did not have the right to secede. They also concentrated on the wealthy people and the industry going on in the north. And for the African Americans, the United States abolished slavery and gave citizenship to blacks. But the country needed to be reconstructed. So there were two types of reconstruction. There was presidential reconstruction, and congressional reconstruction. Presidential reconstruction consisted of things like ratifying the 13th amendment which was to abolish slavery, pardoning the pledge of allegiance, the president pardoning for officials, provisional appointed governors, and state constitutional conventions. On the other hand the congressional reconstruction...

... middle of paper ...

... many other things! “The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute quality of the two raves before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinction based upon color, or to enforce social as distinguished from political quality, or a commingling of the two raves upon terns unsatisfactory to either.” This is a quote from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court thought that the two raves should be separate but equal. But even though the two races were separate, it was still not equal because there were much less public restrooms, restaurants, and other things for the blacks in America.
Blacks were discriminated almost every aspect of life. The Jim Crow laws helped in this discrimination. The Jim Crow laws were laws using racial segregation from 1876 – 1965 at both a social and at a state level.