After one of America’s darkest moments, the Civil War, the people saw how divided they had really become. No thought had been given to who they were fighting whether brother. father, or stranger, just that they needed to do their part. Inevitably, the rifts created had no simple fix. ‘With the North and South divided, all flickers of hope that life would return as the way it had been once slowly sputtered a dying gasp. Since the Northerners reigned victorious, the rebel states remained at their mercy and bidding. The fact that the United States faced potential threats if they stayed divided prompted the government to start a phase of Reconstruction to repair the damage both fiscally and socially in the states.However, even though the North
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At first, life for them seemed to be improving. Congress passed a set of discrimination laws known as the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which banned all discrimination in public accommodations such opera houses, hotels, etc. The states also ratified the 13th and 14th amendments which abolished slavery and granted citizenship to all born and naturalized in the Country. However,one day the situation changed for the worse. Less than 10 years after the Civil Rights Act, in 1883, Congress revoked it calling it “unconstitutional”. Enraged at the decision, the Black Community felt this as a way for the white people to legally be able to divide the social classes by color once again. An entire war had just been fought, yet the country still wanted to return to its baser state. Of course the decision delighted the Southerners but ironically, the North was the ones that stood behind the revocation of the Act. Even though slavery had met the dissent of the Northerners during the war, legal segregation now seemed permissible to them. Blacks had to adhere to all the same regulations and rules as the whites but received ill treatment. Bishop H.M. Turner, a civil rights Activist in 1888, described the treatment this way “I mean that colored persons are required to pay first-class fare and in payment therefor are given no-class treatment, or at least the kind with which no other human being, paying first-class fare, is served.” Even though the North had once been seen a source of hope for the blacks, that time had now ended. The black community lost their key ally. In the book New Perspectives on the History of the South : After Slavery : Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South, Brian Kelly writes that the African American “triumph marked not so much a new trend in black thinking as the eclipse of the black working-class politics that had flickered so brightly, yet
At first, life for them seemed to be improving. Congress passed a set of discrimination laws known as the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which banned all discrimination in public accommodations such opera houses, hotels, etc. The states also ratified the 13th and 14th amendments which abolished slavery and granted citizenship to all born and naturalized in the Country. However,one day the situation changed for the worse. Less than 10 years after the Civil Rights Act, in 1883, Congress revoked it calling it “unconstitutional”. Enraged at the decision, the Black Community felt this as a way for the white people to legally be able to divide the social classes by color once again. An entire war had just been fought, yet the country still wanted to return to its baser state. Of course the decision delighted the Southerners but ironically, the North was the ones that stood behind the revocation of the Act. Even though slavery had met the dissent of the Northerners during the war, legal segregation now seemed permissible to them. Blacks had to adhere to all the same regulations and rules as the whites but received ill treatment. Bishop H.M. Turner, a civil rights Activist in 1888, described the treatment this way “I mean that colored persons are required to pay first-class fare and in payment therefor are given no-class treatment, or at least the kind with which no other human being, paying first-class fare, is served.” Even though the North had once been seen a source of hope for the blacks, that time had now ended. The black community lost their key ally. In the book New Perspectives on the History of the South : After Slavery : Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South, Brian Kelly writes that the African American “triumph marked not so much a new trend in black thinking as the eclipse of the black working-class politics that had flickered so brightly, yet