Derrick Murphy on Reconstruction Era

Derrick Murphy, et al. (Collins Educational, London, 2001)

How important was the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) for the development of African-American civil rights? (pp315-317)

The end of the Civil War should have been a major turning point in the history of African Americans. The North's victory brought an end to slavery. In addition, the three Civil War Amendments - the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth - seem to have guaranteed African Americans full civil and political equality.

However, the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) proved to be a false dawn for the four million slaves in the former Confederacy and border states. During this period, attempts were made to improve the civil, political and social position of the former slaves.

In March 1865, before the end of the Civil War, the Freedman's Bureau was created by the federal government to give food, shelter, medical aid and land to ex-slaves. In 1866, a Freedmans Bureau Act was passed, over President Johnson's veto, which extended the work of the Bureau. It also included the right of military courts in the South to hear cases of racial discrimination. Although poorly resourced, the Freedmans Bureau did help the creation of schools for African Americans. It was aided in this task by charity workers from the North and by religious organisations. In 1865, 95% of ex-slaves were illiterate. This had dropped to 81% in 1870 and to 64% by 1890. African-American education was enhanced further with the creation of higher education institutions, such as Howard University and Fisk University in 1866-67. African Americans also benefited from the Civil Rights Act of March 1866. This gave them citizenship and outlawed racial discrimination. However, the most important reforms were the three Civil War amendments -13, 14 and 15.

Nevertheless, attempts to improve the position of African Americans in the former Confederacy faced considerable opposition. In 1865 and 1866, all the former Confederate states had passed 'black codes' which replaced the old slave codes. Although their content varied from state to state, the underlying aim was to keep the freed slaves in a second-class position. The most oppressive 'black code' was against vagrancy. Homeless freed-men were fined and imprisoned. To counter the black codes, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

A more sinister form of white opposition came in the form of vigilantes and the use of violence. In 1866, ex-Confederates in Pulaski, Tennessee formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The KKK used violence and intimidation against African American and white supporters of Reconstruction governments in the South. In May 1866, white crowds in Memphis, Tennessee, attacked African Americans who had served in the Northern Army, killing 46. In Mississippi, Klansmen mutilated a leading black Republican. In 1870, in Georgia, the Klan murdered three scallywag Republicans.

Congress reacted to the rise of white vigilante groups by passing a series of acts between 1870 and 1872. In May 1870, the First Enforcement Act protected black voters. In February 1871, the Second Enforcement Act provided federal supervision of southern elections. Finally, in 1872, the Third Enforcement Act gave federal troops the power to suspend habeus corpus and arrest suspected KKK members. The combined result of this federal action was to remove the threat, albeit temporarily, of white intimidation of African Americans.

The Reconstruction era has been portrayed, in the past, as a period of African-American domination of southern politics. In some ways, this is true. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868 completely altered the electorate in the former Confederacy. In the 1868 presidential election, the Republican candidate, Ulysses Grant, won by 300,000 votes. It is clear that, without the 700,000 African-American votes from the South, he would not have achieved a majority of votes.

Yet within the Southern states, black political control was a fiction. Only one African American became a Lieutenant (Deputy) Governor of a state, Pinckney Pinchbeck of Louisiana. Two blacks became US senators, both from Mississippi: Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce. Fourteen blacks became Congressmen. Even when 600 blacks were elected to state legislatures, they did not always work together.

A greater failing of the Reconstruction period was in social matters. As the African-American leader Frederick Douglass noted, the former slaves were 'left free from the individual master but a slave of society'. Without education, money or property, the ex-slave faced a new type of social inferiority. Only 4,000 freed slaves gained land under the Southern Homestead Act of 1866. During the Reconstruction period, work on the plantation was replaced by sharecropping. With very high rates of interest for borrowing money, African-American sharecroppers were kept in a cycle of poverty and dependence upon whites. Following the economic crash of 1873, their position deteriorated further.

A development which became a recurrent feature of African-American life was the desire to leave discrimination and intimidation in the South by moving North and West. During the 1870s, over 15,000 African Americans left the South and moved to the Free State of Kansas to set up as homesteaders. When they arrived, they still faced racial discrimination. As long ago as the 1830s, the French political observer Alexis de Tocqueville noted: 'race prejudice seems stronger in those states where slavery no longer exists'.

Although African Americans faced the most severe discrimination in the Old South, it did not mean that there was racial tolerance elsewhere. In 1877, Reconstruction came to an end with the Compromise of 1877. To get elected president, Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes needed southern electoral college votes. To acquire these, he abandoned Reconstruction. This allowed white supremacists in the Democratic Party to gain control of all of the Old South, inaugurating a new 'dark age' for African Americans.

Civil War Amendments to the US Constitution passed during Reconstruction

Thirteenth Amendment Ended slavery in the USA Became law in December 1865

Fourteenth Amendment Provided equal protection Became law in July 1868 under the law for all citizens. Extended right to due process of law to the individual states

Fifteenth Amendment Guaranteed right to vote to Became law in March 1870 All citizens irrespective of race, colour or previous condition of servitude (slavery)