The Post-Reconstruction Era was a time period in which whites in the south developed a means of institutional discrimination against blacks. The creation of the Jim Crow laws legally took away many of the rights that blacks gained during the Reconstruction Era while mobs used illegal and violent methods of oppressing blacks. Blacks were basically reduced to a state that was a minimal improvement over slavery. Many blacks chose to remain silent regarding the struggles they were facing in the south during the Post-Reconstruction Era. During that time, blacks faced their biggest struggles since the abolishment of slavery in the South. The Jim Crow laws and mob violence ensured that blacks could not thrive economically, socially, or politically …show more content…
Following their success during the Reconstruction Era, whites ensured that blacks were immobilized in society by inflicting high rates of violence against them. Many individuals were afraid to act against whites and their immoral actions and laws. Ida B. Wells reported in A Red Record that "during a single year, 1892, 241 men, women, and children across 26 states were lynched. Of the 241, 160 people were identified as African Americans, which represented an increase of 200 percent over the ten-year period since 1882” (Wells, 1997, p. 10) . During and Post Reconstruction, violence toward African Americans increased dramatically which left many blacks helpless due to fears of being targeted by mobs. Post-Reconstruction saw the development of a huge number of mobs with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) being the most prominent of the mobs. Mobs inflicted violence against blacks most often in the form of lynchings and beatings. These mob attacks targeted not only men, but women and children. Ida B. Wells viewed lynching as "a crime against American values" (Wells, 1997, p. 27). One of the most important takeaways of this book that blacks did not choose to submit to the violence inflicted against them but were crippled by it. Those such as Ida B. Wells fought to have the violence against blacks
The Moore’s Ford lynching shows that the Ku Klux Klan was still very powerful in Georgia just after the Second World War. Blacks who lived in these areas which were overwhelmingly rural and contained large plantations owned by white men were regularly browbeaten into submission by the white minority and sporadic outbreaks of violence were not uncommon. There was a wealth of evidence against several white men who were prominent citizens of the county, but no prosecution was ever conducted and the murderers went to their graves without having paid for their crime....
Even when the Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, and the black people embraced education, built their own churches, reunited with their broken families and worked very hard in the sharecropping system, nothing was enough for the Reconstruction to succeed. Whites never gave total freedom to African Americans. Blacks were forced to endure curfews, passes, and living on rented land, which put them in a similar situation as slaves. In
During this time period, most of the south lived in poverty and about a 3rd were illiterate. When blacks became free, whites felt threatened of the once black slaves. Black people who worked in the mud and had nothing to their names, now trying to gain what the white man has. Due to this white southerners formed groups to attack and intimidated blacks, but the violence grow wide spread. This cased what we called the radical reconstruction.
We saw the Thirteenth Amendment occur to abolish slavery. We also saw the Civil Rights Acts which gave full citizenship, as well as the prohibiting the denial of due process, etc. Having the civil rights laws enabled African Americans to new freedoms which they did not used to have. There was positive change occurring in the lives of African Americans. However, there was still a fight to suppress African Americans and maintain the racial hierarchy by poll taxes and lengthy and expensive court proceedings. Sadly, this is when Jim Crow laws appeared. During this time African Americans were losing their stride, there was an increase in prison populations and convict labor, and the convicts were
Southern Horror s: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells took me on a journey through our nations violent past. This book voices how strong the practice of lynching is sewn into the fabric of America and expresses the elevated severity of this issue; she also includes pages of graphic stories detailing lynching in the South. Wells examined the many cases of lynching based on “rape of white women” and concluded that rape was just an excuse to shadow white’s real reasons for this type of execution. It was black’s economic progress that threatened white’s ideas about black inferiority. In the South Reconstruction laws often conflicted with real Southern racism. Before I give it to you straight, let me take you on a journey through Ida’s
The population of African Americans from 1865 to 1900 had limited social freedom. Social limitations are limitations that relate “…to society and the way people interact with each other,” as defined by the lesson. One example of a social limitation African Americans experienced at the time is the white supremacy terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. The KKK started as a social club formed by former confederate soldiers, which rapidly became a domestic terrorist organization. The KKK members were white supremacists who’s objective was to ward off African Americans from using their new political power. In an attempts to achieve their objective, Klansmen would burn African American schools, scare and threaten voters, destroy the homes of African Americans and also the homes of whites who supported African American rights. The greatest terror the KKK imposed was that of lynching. Lynching may be defined via the lesson as, “…public hanging for an alleged offense without benefit of trial.” As one can imagine these tactics struck fear into African Americans and the KKK was achiev...
Ida B. Wells-Barnett is an investigative journalist who wrote in honesty and bluntness about the tragedies and continued struggles of the Negro man. She was still very much involved with the issue even after being granted freedom and the right to vote. Statistics have shown that death and disparity continued to befall the Negro people in the South where the white man was “educated so long in that school of practice” (Pg. 677 Par. 2). Yet in all the countless murders of Negroes by the white man only three had been convicted. The white man of the South, although opposed to the freedom of Negroes would eventually have to face the fact of the changing times. However, they took every opportunity and excuse to justify their continued horrors. There were three main excuses that the white man of the South came up w...
The social history regarding reconstruction has been of great controversy for the last two decades in America. Several wars that occurred in America made reconstruction efforts to lag behind. Fundamental shortcomings of the reconstruction were based on racism, politics, capitalism and social relations. The philosophy was dominant by the people of South under the leadership of Lincoln. Lincoln plans were projected towards bringing the states from the South together as one nation. However, the efforts of the Activist were faded by the intrusion of the Republicans from the North. Northerners were capitalists and disapproved the ideas that Lincoln attempted to spread in the South (Foner Par 2).
Ida B. Wells was dedicated to journalism and letting people know what is going on. With her journalism investigation instincts, she uses to identify what excuses the whites use to identify lynch campaign against blacks. In the following essay, I will explain what reasons for this vicious and sustained campaign of violence against African-Americans.
The Reconstruction-era was an extremely rough period for the African-Americans as well as many white settlers. The African-Americans endured numerous hardships and losses as a result of the white settlers' frustrations. Although the African-Americans' losses were great during this time, the progress made throughout that period is amazing. Many of them were sent off with nothing, to live on their own and a number of them managed to meet success. Their largest success came when the Reconstruction-era ended. African-Americans fought and struggled for their freedom, rights, and equality, for years, and although it took them a long time, they accomplished what they set out to do.
After the ending of the Civil War in 1865, slavery was, at last, formally abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment. Due to the freedom of these African Americans and the South’s ever-growing hatred towards this group, African Americans were left to suffer harsh discrimination and horrible conditions. Africans Americans were left without homes, education, jobs, or money. Reconstruction was the Radical Republicans’ attempt to try and bring the Confederate states back to normal and unite both the South and the North into a whole country once again. Reconstruction was also set to protect and help the newly freed African Americans assimilate to the new society and the foreign economy they were placed in. Conditions of the African Americans in the South before, during, and after the reconstruction period were no doubt harsh. African Americans, before the Reconstruction Era, struggled to assimilate with the hateful society they were thrown in, if not still slaves. Although their condition improved slightly, African Americans during the reconstruction period experienced extreme terrorism, discrimination, pressure, and hatred from the south, along with the struggle of keeping alive. After the military was taken out of the South, African Americans’ condition after the Reconstruction Era relapsed back as if Reconstruction never happened.
William Mason Grosvenor believes that Reconstruction should be harsh. Grosvenor has two main arguments to support this belief, manifest destiny and the potential for the reoccurrence of a similar event to the war if Reconstruction was carried out in a lenient manner. Grosvenor argues that the country, pre-Civil War, was never truly a single unified country, but rather a group of peoples with vastly different values held together by a constitution which they had outgrown, saying, “[n]o chemical union had ever taken place; for that the white-hot crucible of civil war was found necessary.” Furthermore, Grosvenor believes that the succession of the South demonstrated this divide while simultaneously violating the doctrine of manifest destiny through
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!
Even before the war ended, President Lincoln started the task of reformation. Determined by a need to build a strong Republican party in the South and to put an end to the bitterness awaken by the war, he devised a plan in a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction with a series of acts to pave the way for a continuation of political, social, and economic gains that African Americans could achieve in Reconstruction.
Who does the blame go towards North or South. The North was to blame for not protecting freedmen, the South was to blame for turning most southern society’s into predominantly white racist communities.