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Growing up Asian in America summary
Problems after the reconstruction period
Problems after the reconstruction period
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To my honorable congressman, This Is a letter regarding the joint resolution to remove federal troops from the citizens in the south. Personally, I believe that reconstruction should not end due to lack of political focus, failure of long-term racial integration, and failure in rebuilding the economics The amendments are promising, bringing about rights to an african american such as being a citizen and being allowed to vote. The allowing of 14 african americans being elected into congress also shows much development. However, white supremacist groups are forming such as the kkk, white league, and the knights of the white camellia.Additionally, laws such as the black codes and jim crow laws were passed restricting african americans and supporting
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.
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 1866, the KKK started a wave of violence and abuse against negroes in the south, destroying their properties, assaulting and killing them in different ways, just because angry white people do not want the blacks to stand up and join in political or any kind of issues or freedom. The Fourteenth Amendment did surely constitute the biggest development of government force following the approval of the Constitution.
In this essay I will be writing about the effectiveness of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America and considering whether they achieved the purpose of making life better for African Americans. I’m going to start this essay by talking about the Amendments and what they were designed to achieve.
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
...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.
After the great battle of the American Civil War was fought, and the North won, a bigger battle still had to take place; reconstruction. Reconstruction after the war was not going to be easy, and it was not. What was the primary goal? What should be done to ex-confederates? Free Blacks? How should this reconstruction take place? Many of these questions were solved by the government, but how well? Reconstruction could have gone very differently, and that is what I intend to show. I will develop my own reconstruction policy for the United States after the American Civil War, dealing with several critical points, and the overall re-integration of the south into the Union. My policy is based on equality for the South and North, and making sure that a political balance and a balance of economic power was restored as much as possible.
Although many laws were passed that recognized African Americans as equals, the liberties they had been promised were not being upheld. Hoffman, Blum, and Gjerde state that “Union League members in a North Carolina county, upon learning of three or four black men who ‘didn’t mean to vote,’ threatened to ‘whip them’ and ‘made them go.’ In another country, ‘some few colored men who declined voting’ were, in the words of a white conservative, ‘bitterly persecute[ed]” (22). Black codes were also made to control African Americans. Norton et al. states that “the new black codes compelled former slaves to carry passes, observe a curfew, live in housing provided by a landowner, and give up hope of entering many desirable occupations” (476). The discrimination and violence towards African Americans during this era and the laws passed that were not being enforced were very disgraceful. However, Reconstruction was a huge stepping stone for the way our nation is shaped today. It wasn’t pretty but it was the step our nation needed to take. We now live in a country where no matter the race, everyone is considered equal. Reconstruction was a success. Without it, who knows where our nation would be today. African American may have never gained the freedoms they have today without the
...n of the 15th amendment. The 15th amendment provided a ray of hope to ex-slaves and their desire for equal rights in a racially unequal country. However, because of its passing, the 15th amendment also spurred racial sentiments even more then before 1870. Because of the new amendment, many whites saw there positions of power being threatened. What seemed at first a new found sense of belonging, quickly transformed to an increased sense of alienation and political pressure However, political cartoons directly after the ratification seem to side step the issue of disenfranchisement of black voters. While many show the new freedoms enjoy by black citizens, few show depictions of white supremacist group coercing black citizens. It would not be until almost one hundred years after the 15th amendment that this political pressure would be relieved from black voters.
Reconstruction has been brutally murdered! For a little over a decade after the Civil War, the victorious North launched a campaign of social, economic, and political recovery in South. Martial law was also implemented in the South. Eventually, the North hoped to admit the territory in the former Confederacy back into the United States as states. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments freed the African Americans, made them citizens, and gave them the right to vote. Despite this, Reconstruction was unfortunately cut short in 1877. The North killed Recosntruction because of racism, negligence, and distractions.
...as one of the most influential Amendments passed in the U.S. ended slavery, but African Americans still did not have the same rights that white Americans did. The 13th amendment made everyone seem the same. People should not be treated different and we are all equal.
In conclusion, though the evils of white supremacy are still being felt, there has been progressive change of different aspects in favor of the African-Americans compared to the time before the rise of the civil rights movement.
In conclusion, the NAACP is still activist group in today’s time and still fights for the rights of African Americans. There are still KKK group members and Klan’s in America trying to stop Africans from being a normal citizen but as long as the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendment are in play they will live the life of any ordinary American citizen. The NAACP will always try to fight for desegregation. Maybe in twenty more years America will be completely free of racism and segregation. America has come a long way. It is gotten so much better in the world that in today’s time we have a African-American president.
Tragically, however, very few of these goals were achieved. It seems as if every time the African Americans manage to move one step closer to reaching true equality among the Southern whites, whether it be in a social, political, or economic fashion, the whites always react by committing violent acts against them. Initially, the Southern whites (in fear of black supremacy in Southern politics) fought to preserve the white supremacy Southern politics had always functioned by. This “ushered most African Americans to the margins of the southern political world” (Brinkley, 369). Secondly, African Americans struggled to survive once they were set free; they had nowhere to live and nothing to eat. Because of such reasons, most former slaves decided to remain living on their plantations as tenants, paying their tenancy by working the crop fields. Sadly, even this failed for the African Americans due to the birth of the crop-lien system. Lastly, the Southern whites counteracted the effects of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments by establishing the Jim Crow laws, which aided them with upholding, if not increasing, the steady level of segregation in the South. Ultimately, out of the very few accomplishments made by the African American population during and following the Era of Reconstruction, there existed one achievement significant enough to change the course of American history: the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. As a result of these amendments, “would one day serve as the basis for a “Second Reconstruction” that would renew the drive to bring freedom to all Americans” (Brinkley,
Although African Americans were finally able to gain back their freedom; they did not gain equality in the eyes of their former oppressors. Resentful of the newfound freedom of African Americans, laws known as Jim Crow laws were established throughout the United Stated by states and local governments. These discriminatory laws worked to systematically oppress African Americans through segregation and violence. They were segregated from whites; forbidden to attend the same schools, eat in the same restaurants or intermarry. African Americans were treated as second class citizens; lesser beings that had no rights. “Blacks could not vote, sue whites, testify against them, raise their voice to them or even look them in the eye or stay on the sidewalk if they passed.” (BL p.98) The era of Jim Crow was a dangerous time where even a glance was enough for an African American to be murdered. But there was only so much abuse that would be withstood. The winds of change were beginning to stir and African Americans and their supporters were beginning to demand their equality.
It wasn’t easy being an African American, back then they had to fight in order to achieve where they are today, from slavery and discrimination, there was a very slim chance of hope for freedom or even citizenship. This longing for hope began to shift around the 1950’s. During the Civil Rights Movement, where discrimination still took place, it was the time when African Americans started to defend their rights and honor to become freemen like every other citizen of the United States. African Americans were beginning to gain recognition after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, which declared all people born natural in the United States and included the slaves that were previously declared free. However, this didn’t prevent the people from disputing against the constitutional law, especially the people in the South who continued to retaliate against African Americans and the idea of integration in white schools....