Failure Of Reconstruction Essay

After the Civil War and during the Radical Reconstruction era, the federal government and local governments passed laws and legislation to assist newly freed blacks, but the success of this legislation varied in bringing effective change to their fiscal status and basic rights. After the Civil War, the United States was trying to put itself back together with the addition of the newly freed slaves. In order to create this new America, laws and social expectations were attempted to make blacks and whites equal, not only in front of the law, but also in social norms. The biggest and most far reaching of these legislations was the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, which declared clear guidelines for legal treatment and rights for African Americans. State laws were also added that varied by state. These state laws had a larger impact on the social aspects of black integration. The biggest failure of reconstruction was the institutionalized punitive slavery and mistreatment of blacks in the former confederate states.

When slavery was abolished in 1865, black life was not as perfect as abolitionists may have hoped.

The newly freed slaves still faced extreme prejudice and continued to be consigned to a lower tier of society than whites. With the introduction of the 15th Amendment and black suffrage the freed slaves, in the eyes of the constitution, were equal to whites. However that did not guarantee them the right to vote. A series unfair and unjust local and state laws that targeted blacks, were established in many southern states. These included the Jim Crow laws, which were intended to exclude blacks from voting, by instituting literacy tests or creating other obstacles to voting. Racism and discrimination also excluded blacks from many jobs, from entering into contracts or opening businesses or purchasing

land.

In a broader scheme congress ruled in the civil rights act of 1875 that it could not enforce a law that ¨Made it a punishable offense to deprive them (African Americans) of accommodations and advantages in inns, public conveyances, and theaters”(document 16) and ruled that such a law had no basis in the constitution or the newly ratified amendments. With such exclusion legally backed it was more difficult for blacks and whites to see each other as equals or to even have daily interactions of mutual respect. The two races were both socially and physically separated, to the economic advantage of whites.

When this atmosphere was challenged, the term “separate but equal” became the law of the land. Plessy v. Ferguson,, a case that was decided in 1896 solidified this absurdity. Plessy was ⅞ white and ⅛ black but when he sat on a whites only train car he was arrested and chose to bring the case all the way to the supreme court. The Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Brown, stated that “If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”(Brown, 1896) Brown argued that it was the burden of the freedmen to prove and build their social equality and that to assist them would be to put them in a superior position over whites. Brown tasked the freedmen to build their race from the ground up if they wanted equality, even as their travel was restricted and they were denied access to quality schools and higher skilled, higher wage jobs.

Frederick Douglass commented on the necessity of economic power in order to maintain liberty. He pointed out that, “since poverty has, and can have no chance against wealth, the landless against the landowner...the freedman was powerless.” Without the status and means to achieve economic stability liberty was “dependent on the thought, feeling, and action” of the majority white race. (Douglass, 1882) Freedmen still faced forms of forced labor, in the forms of convict leasing and tenant farming. Tenant farming and sharecropping kept the laborer in a constant cycle of debt and financial dependency. Large employers were often former plantation owners and they often denied paid work to those they formerly owned. Many laws targeted against blacks also had strong financial penalties and due to this economic oppression many freed blacks ended up in prison based on an inability to pay fines. This often led to imprisoned blacks performing slave labor in convict leasing programs. In this way economic oppression forced them back to slave status.
Politically, the federal legislation, the Amendments passed during the Reconstruction Era laid the groundwork for integration and later social justice movements for African Americans. At the time the Amendments enforcement and interpretation were ambiguous, or outright ignored. Federal action showed the ideals of radical reconstruction but lacked coherent and meaningful execution. Since freed African Americans were kept at an economic disadvantage they could not rise to the social power or representation of whites.