The Black Codes of Mississippi and the views towards African Americans in the 19th century were the cause to the lack of freedom and respect given to the freedmen. Around the time of 1865, the United States of America was heading towards a paramount path of reconstruction for social and economic issues, such as slavery. As the country sprinted towards this movement, the leaders and upper class of the time skewed the ideas and morals of the new era. Carrying over the same leaders from pre-civil wartime left same concepts in place; the views towards blacks in the south did not change and until a later time, the leaders of the time made little progress to improve the blacks place in society. There were new laws put into place but they were not proactive to insure the freedom of freedmen.
The Black codes of Mississippi were a “way southern states strive to maintain the old order while limiting the newly acquired rights of African Americans”. This quote as it stands is the very ideology of the state back in 1865. They wanted to keep the order but they did not want the African Americans to get all of their rights back. Many of the new laws alluded to the fact that the Whites were still in charge and the freedmen and their children were not free. In the Mississippi Apprentice Laws, it states, “masters have the power to inflict chastisement”. This quote shows that the old masters still have control of these children. The Mississippi Apprentice Laws also state that the children must give “service of his or her master…in indenture”, which shows the child never left slavery. These children were usually orphaned children. The government assigned a master to kids whose parents could not afford or refused to take care of them. By using the ...
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...se the southerners were still racist and supremacist. The Ku Klux Klan inflicts another account of negativity towards blacks happening, just in a more violent manner. The KKK was a very violent racist group that terrorized many people such as the people in the testimony from a Congressional Hearing. In this testimony the KKK is cited for abuse, threats, death threats, and demeaning attitudes. People like this were around during the time of reconstruction to slow and reverse the process of incorporating freedmen into society.
There was no respect for freedmen during this time, and the leaders in charge were no help in passing the correct legislation to confront this issue. The new time for reconstruction was a time that the freedmen were in theory, supposed to become free, but the current ideas and laws of the time did not permit that to happen.
KKK was targeting certain type of people. In Document A it says the type of people the KKK was targeting were congressmen, radical republicans, carpetbaggers,and scalawags. KKK was targeting them because those people mostly liked reconstruction.In Document B it talks about the KKK was threatining and half killing a former slave named Abram Colby. KKK was threatening him because he was voting for the radical ticket. KKK didn't want him to vote for that because that would give black people rights, and they want slaves to reunite. In Document B Colby says, "On the 29th of October 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead (Colby paragraph 1)." Colby was asked, "What is the character of those men who were engaged in whipping you (Colby paragraph 2)?" South killed reconstruction because KKK was really angry and mad that there was reconstruction. KKK was mad about reconstruction because now slaves that have been freed have same and equal rights. KKK wanted slaves and didn't want to do things
They thought they were lesser people and deserved to go back to slavery. Colby later wrote in his testimony to the House, “Some are first-class men in or town. One is a lawyer, one a doctor, and some are farmers… They said I had voted for Grant and had carried the Negroes against them (Doc B).” Colby is again talking about the KKK and what they said to him that night. This quote describes the actions of those rich white men. Why else would they act out like that? They gained power by terrorizing the voters. In the Independent Monitor, on September 1, 1868, there was an image depicting the democratic KKK hanging carpetbaggers (Picture in Doc A). The term “Carpetbaggers” means a Northerner heading South after the Civil War. They usually took important offices and tried to get rid of slavery. That angered the South and the KKK. Though some Northerners had bad perspectives on the Freedmen in the South, so did the people in the South. There is an image about the South Carolina State Legislature during Reconstruction (Picture in Doc D) that shows the African Americans arguing , while the white senators look angry and frustrated with them. Their faces show they are haughty and are looking down upon the newly elected African American senators. This shows they think they are better than
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
The KKK were Southerners, and also terrorists. They tried their hardest to destroy the Reconstruction and African American rights. I have a quote for my evidence. “The Klansman broke my door open, took my out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead,” (Colby 513). This proves the KKK would stop at nothing to destroy what they believed was wrong. Even though the KKK were a huge disruption in the Reconstruction, they didn’t completely destroy it. This helps me answer the question because it says that even though the KKK caused damage, it wasn’t all of
An example of the KKK using violence was “John W. Stephens, State Senator from Caswell, is dead. He was foully murdered by the Ku-Klux in the Grand Jury room of the Courthouse.” This was making a big impact on Reconstruction because the KKK was killing anybody that supported Reconstruction. Another piece of evidence of the KKK killing reconstruction was, “[the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. They said to me, “Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?” “They said I had voted for Grant and had carried the Negroes against them. About two days before they whipped me they offered me $5,000 to go with them and they said they would pay me $2,500 in cash if I would let another man to go the legislature in my place.” This negatively impacted reconstruction because the KKK were killing and bribing anybody who voted the Radical Ticket. Overall, there’s plenty of reasons the KKK put a negative impact on the Reconstruction of the
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...
Reconstruction(1865-1877) was the time period in which the US rebuilt after the Civil War. During this time, the question the rights of freed slaves in the United States were highly debated. Freedom, in my terms, is the privilege of doing as you please without restriction as long as it stays within the law. However, in this sense, black Americans during the Reconstruction period were not truly free despite Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. While legally free, black Americans were still viewed through the lens of racism and deeply-rooted social biases/stigmas that prevented them from exercising their legal rights as citizens of the United States. For example, black Americans were unable to wholly participate in the government as a
Free blacks from the south were facing many situations from the whites from the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were to prevent free blacks and other non-whites from being able to vote and have a voice within the government. Laws and statements were established such as the Grandfather Clause, which would prevent anyone whose grandfather could not vote from voting. Since the majority of blacks grandfathers did not vote and was not even free, free blacks in the south were denied the right to vote. Free blacks were now being denied any privilege that non slaves (whites) already had. Their "freedom" was only from slavery, now they realized that they were still a slave to the world. Also during this time blacks were being discriminated against and the lynchings of blacks were occurring. Blacks were becoming endangered and feared for their lives.
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
After the end of American Civil War in 1865, The Thirteenth Amendment was added to the constitution of the United States that stated “Neither slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, nor any place subject to their jurisdiction.” By this no black people could be owned by the whites. In spite of this, blacks were severely segregated in the South. This resulted in the formation of anti-radical movement in the South called Ku Klux Klan organization which represented white supremacy by whipping ...
In the first few years of the Reconstruction, violent acts against the former slaves took place primarily in the south. In 1866, about one year after the civil war, the most well renowned terrorist group of the time, the Klu Klux Klan, took shape in Tennessee. In 1866, the Civil Rights Bill was proposed in Congress. At the time, it was referred to as, “one of the most important bills ever presented to the House for its action.”
... 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.
During the time of reconstruction, the 13th amendment abolished slavery. As the Nation was attempting to pick up their broken pieces and mend the brokenness of the states, former slaves were getting the opportunity to start their new, free lives. This however, created tension between the Northerners and the Southerners once again. The Southerners hated the fact that their slaves were being freed and did not belong to them anymore. The plantations were suffering without the slaves laboring and the owners were running out of solutions. This created tension between the Southern planation owners and the now freed African Americans. There were many laws throughout the North and the South that were made purposely to discriminate the African Americans.
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 issued by President Lincoln was set up to free blacks from slavery. Soon after Congress enacted and the states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the nation (Library of Congress). After the Civil War, I feel the biggest problem in the South was labor. To the new African American's freedom meant freedom from white control, autonomy as individuals and as a community. For the most part black people wanted to work for themselves and not for their former masters. But, most black chose to leave the South altogether.
Reconstruction was needed and the period following the civil war, the reconstruction period, fostered many significant results and achievements especially for Constitutional amendments. While mending a broken country, the reconstruction period still left many fresh wounds. There was great successes and championships for former slaves and the blacks rights, but their was still lingering thoughts and acts of discrimination towards these groups. Reconstruction produced three amendments defending the people 's rights, yet discrimination towards blacks was peeking to new heights. Laws were not enough to change the hearts and minds of the people, which was at the core of the issue. With the unfortunate loss of the nation’s leader, it would be almost a hundred years later until America had leaders strong enough, in the nineteen sixties, that could change the ideas of racism and