Reconstruction
April 28, 2011
Professor Eisenberg
What was the cause for segregation in the south?
The Day Freedom Died and When did Southern Segregation Begin are two books that cover events that happened during the Reconstruction period. Charles Lane through his political and social analysis shines an illuminating light on one of America's more sordid events. The Colfax Massacre gained national attention so much that the event is now an interracial group that commemorates an event. John David Smith the author of When did Southern Segregation Begin takes a straight forward approach in his book and explains multiple reasons for why this may have occurred. People often assume that segregation was a natural outcome of Reconstruction which can seem somewhat believable depending on your knowledge of the subject. But in all actuality scholars cannot agree on which events at the end of the nineteenth century mark the beginning of formalized Jim Crow. Studies show how blacks and whites learned to be civilized when they encountered each other. The division of the two races happens soon after the end of the Civil War. This essay will attempt to analyze when southern segregation begin.
Following the Civil War, Colfax, Louisiana, was a town, like many, where Negroes and whites mingled uneasily. But on April 13, 1873, a small army of white ex-Confederate soldiers, enraged after attempts by freedmen to assert their new rights, killed more than sixty Negroes who had occupied a courthouse. There were barely armed former slaves that were knifed, burned, smoked out of a courthouse, and gunned down by a white posse angry over an 1872 Republican election victory. “the Ku Klux Klan declared. Its goals were “to protect the weak, innocent and defenseless,” and “to protect the constitution on the Untied States.[1] The United States passed the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, putting an end to almost 250