A. The Reconstruction period took place after the Civil war from 1865-1877 by Abraham Lincoln to rebuild the South that occupied Union soldiers. There were many changes that affected African-Americans, such as amendments 13-15, which gave them certain rights. This period was very important for Blacks in America, it was the time when they were completely free from slavery and the citizenship changed how they lived their lives. They were given civil rights, which gave them the right to sue or sit on juries, voting, and owning property. This time frame also gave us the creation of the first public school systems in the South. There were changes in the labor force and working conditions, which came about with sharecropping. (Norton, 2015) One …show more content…
thing that changed everything for African-Americans forever, was the 13th Amendment, which gave them freedom. The 13th Amendment became ratified in December 1865, which officially abolished slavery in the United States. Basically, stating that no person could be forced into slavery unless it’s for punishment. (Norton, 2015) The 14th Amendment, ratified on July 1868, even though most Southern States had originally rejected it.
This amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. Which meant that all people, including former slaves, including those freed after the Civil War, were now considered citizens. This was also known as the Reconstruction Amendment, which forbade states to deny life, liberty and land without due process. It also stated that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote, which became ratified in February 1870. It stated that the right to vote couldn’t be denied to any citizen, regardless of race, color, or being a former slave. There were organizations created in order educate and train in the registration process in voting, for Blacks. Even though the Southern states were finding ways to make African-Americans ineligible to vote, such as literacy tests and using polling taxes. (Norton, …show more content…
2015) For example, White men and plantation owners dominated Southern society continued to have extreme racism regardless of the Amendments. Poll taxes were being implemented to keep blacks from voting, they didn’t have ways of making money, which made it next to impossible to vote. The whites didn’t like that former slave was now free and continued to try to control the freedom of the slaves by implanting restrictions like Black Codes. Things like the literacy test were an example of a black code, as well as having residence and landowner requirements to vote. Owning land was one of the requirements to be able to vote, thus sharecropping was created to gain this freedom as well as helping each other out. Sharecropping had an impact on the economy, at least among the Black community. Whites used this idea to bring back slavery by restoring gang labor with White overseers. But the Congress and its Radical Republicans, which encouraged free blacks to refuse to sign contracts on gang labor. Which eventually led to sharecropping as a compromise, allowing for 40 acres for family and allowed for men to vote and share crops and not wages. ("America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War", (N.D.) The South also encouraged educational growth, that they thought that the more exposed that people had to academics and culture the better the society would be.
The downside was that the government found it a necessity to increase tax rates, this meant that there was money available for use regardless of the value of the properties around them. They found that the African American teachers would continue to teach but to the adult than students after hours and because of this many were motivated to read the Bible, now that they could. The result was that white supremacists would go around terrorizing the teachers and students, claiming that they had no right to learn and that they were better off, being uneducated. There was a tremendous thirst for education among freed people, however, and black churches often took over the task of providing it. ("America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War",
(N.D.)
Groups of people soon received new rights. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. It gave black Americans full citizenship and guaranteed them equal treatment. Also, it passed the Fourteenth Amendment to make sure that the Supreme Court couldn’t declare the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. The amendment made blacks citizens of the United States and the states in which they lived. Also, states were forbidden to deprive blacks of life, liberty, or property without due process. Additionally, blacks could not be discriminated by the law. If a state would deprive blacks of their rights as citizens, it’s number of congressional representatives would be reduced. The Civil Rights Act as well as the Fourteenth Amendment affected both the North and the South.
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
Finally the 15th Amendment was made in 1870 to assure that every person in the US had the right to vote and no one could take that right away as a result of race, color or because citizens used to be slaves.
...dom and right to vote established by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, blacks were still oppressed by strong black codes and Jim Crow laws. The federal government created strong legislation for blacks to be helped and educated, but it was ineffective due to strong opposition. Although blacks cried out to agencies, such as the Freemen's Bureau, declaring that they were "in a more unpleasant condition than our former" (Document E), their cries were often overshadowed by violence.
Many issues kept Reconstruction from helping the newly freed slaves. For instance, the vast majority of former slaves were uneducated. In many southern states, before and during the Civil War, the educating of slaves was illeg...
...ious slaves the right to citizenship, meaning they were able to do anything that a normal citizen could do, for example hold seats of power. The Fifteenth amendment ensured that they were given the right to vote. However, the reason that their accomplishments were in vain was because they did not get rid of racism. Whatever advancement they made was taken back due to whites still believing in racism. After the Reconstruction era, the South feared an African American with power so they formed hate groups and technicalities to get around amendments. Even though the Fourteenth amendment ensured that slaves were given the right to citizenship, the whole ideal of “separate but equal” came into play. With the Fifteenth amendment, the South was able to justify the racist action of enforcing a literacy clause or a grandfather clause by writing it into their constitution.
... and slavery left millions of newly freed African Americans in the South without an education, a home, or a job. Before reconstruction was put in place, African Americans in the South were left roaming helplessly and hopelessly. During the reconstruction period, the African Americans’ situation did not get much better. Although helped by the government, African Americans were faced with a new problem. African Americans in the South were now being terrorized and violently discriminated by nativist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Such groups formed in backlash to Reconstruction and canceled out all the positive factors of Reconstruction. At last, after the Compromise of 1877, the military was taken out of the South and all of the Reconstruction’s efforts were basically for nothing. African Americans in the South were back to the conditions they started with.
The 15th Amendment was written by George Washington Julian. This amendment was passed on February 26, 1869 and was ratified February 3, 1870. The 15th Amendment was very significant to many Americans of different races because it changed their lives forever by allowing them to vote. “The present difficulty, in bringing all parts of the United States to a happy unity and love of country grows out of the prejudice to color. The prejudice is a senseless one, but it exists,” said U.S. Grant, 1869.
The passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States gave African-Americans recognized rights under the law. However, a national commitment to the civil and political rights of all U.S. citizens without regard to matters of race was destined to last less then a decade.4
As a result of the failure of Johnson's Reconstruction, Congress proposed its own plan. The 14th amendment was one of the many things implemented under this plan. Among other things, this amendment forbade ex-Confederate leaders from holding political office, and gave freedmen their citizenship. The Southern rejection of this amendment, largely as a result of the actions of their former Confederate leaders then in state office, paved the way for the Reconstruction Act of 1867. This dismantled all Southern governments and established military control over the South.
Once freed, African Americans believed that the rights of a citizen were granted to them. They truthfully believed this because after a brutally fought war, basic rights such as education, land, and employment were so modest, they were undeniable. Even though they were proclaimed as free, their place is society remained unaffected. The Freedmen's Bureau became one of the earlier agencies to provide support for newly freedmen. The agency offered education, advice and protection to its members. The most significant asset of the bureau was education. The literacy rate of African Americans rose about twenty percent due to the organization. Some freedmen even attended colleges to earn degrees. Many white Southerners viewed the African American attempt at education as a waste of time. They condemned the efforts of their social improvement. With much criticism by racist whites and inadequate funds, the Freedmen's Bureau concluded by 1872 injuring African American hopes of social equality.
On one hand the slaves were free, and on the other hand they were not given equal rights, and they were discriminated for the color of their skin tone. In other words, Reconstruction was a mixed success, which combined both positive and negative impacts. By the end of the era, the North and South were once again reunited, and all southern state legislatures had abolished slavery in their constitutions. However, it some sense, Reconstruction was a failure because blacks were not provided equal rights and opportunities. Racism and segregation did not end at all. On the other hand, there was a huge change to the country as the US was completely in a chaos stage during the civil war. Despite some obstructions, it can be concluded that the Reconstruction was somewhat beneficial for African American. As time passes, many schools and colleges were founded for blacks, and many other doors were opened to uplift their life. Overall, all these outcomes can be considered as a huge
Following what was arguably the most turbulent time in American history; Reconstruction had far-reaching effects on a number of areas of life in the United States. In the Deep South, one of the clearest impacts could be seen on racial relations, specifically between whites and newly-freed African Americans. Legally, dramatic changes had been made at the federal level, providing African Americans with a host of rights that had never been offered them before. It was no wonder, then, that former slave owners in the South rejected these changes and rights, taking whatever steps necessary to keep African Americans down. The dramatic changes that took place in terms of race relations between African Americans and whites following Reconstruction had a far-reaching impact on society, with the shockwaves of these changes being felt nearly a century into the future.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the States wherein the reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of laws; this brief description is known as the Fourteenth Amendment (Foner A-15).
After the Civil War, the 15th amendment gave African Americans the right to vote . On paper this amendment gave African Americans the right to vote, southern states began to implement Jim Crow laws which restricted African Americans from voting through things such as poll taxes and literacy tests. In the North “racism increasingly restricted the lives and opportunities of the growing number of blacks” . Despite racism in the North and the Jim Crow laws in the South effectively restricting African American citizenship, I feel the framers would fear that the 15th amendment would increase the chances that a tyrannical faction would form and that it would make regulating the effects of factions more difficult. Eventually, the Civil rights act of 1964 abolished Jim Crow laws making the process of voting for African Americans easier. I think that any expansion of who can vote is against what the framers intended as the more people who are allowed the vote, the more powerful and larger factions