Second Reconstruction Research Paper

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Historical Essay In the early twentieth century, The Civil Rights movement confronted a crisis as it sought out to move from access schools, public accommodation, and voting and voting booth to the economic divide separating African Americans from other Americans. In the South and in other parts of nearby states African Americans were banned from associating with whites in many institutions.Racial discrimination deprived African Americans of many beneficial opportunities.(Foner) The Reconstruction act in 1867 which established temporary military governments in ten confederate states- excepting Tennessee- required the states to ratify the fourteenth Amendment and permit freedmen to vote. African Americans where still deprived of their …show more content…
They won election against southern state legislatures and even the U.S. Congress. During this time forces like the Ku Klux Klan fought against the changes brought by the second Reconstruction in a violent backlash which restored white supremacy in the South. The Second Reconstruction was the political realignment that occurred in 1967, which transformed the composition of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. During the mid-twentieth century the nation came to terms with the political and social agendas of the Reconstruction. (Foner) The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s is often referred to as the “Second Reconstruction.” Like the first Reconstruction, however, the Second Reconstruction failed to dismantle the economic inequalities that developed during slavery. They were reinforced by the decades of segregation. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil right law since Reconstruction which established the Civil Rights Commission and the Civil Rights division of the department of justice. (Foner) The 1964 law did not address a major concern of the civil right movement with the right to vote in the South.(Foner) After president Kennedy’s assassination Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th president of …show more content…
The temporary military presence in the Southern states upset radicals. Even with the compromise, Congress did not send enough troops to the South to arrange elections and register voters.(Foner) The act only provided improvements for African Americans in the Southern states. Reconstruction was a major improvement on President Johnson’s Reconstructionism. The lives of African Americans and White Americans changed little. Radicals in Congress successfully passed legislation rights, southerners ignored these laws. The newly formed governments in the south established public schools, but they still remained segregated. They did not receive sufficient funding. Black literacy rates improved, but marginally at best. A major difference between the "Reconstruction" and the civil rights movement of the 1960s is that reconstruction was a government policy that challenged the Confederate States for questioning the authority of the federal government It was an attempt to deny people of their God given rights. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act outlawed poll taxes, literacy tests and other discriminatory practices, finally allowing African Americans to fully exercise the right to vote that the 15th Amendment had promised a century earlier.The civil rights changes of the

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