Rights In The Reconstruction Era

1241 Words 5 Pages

“The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men,” said Lyndon Baynes Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, in a speech at Washington, D.C. ("The Voting Rights Act of 1965"). Ever since the adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870, African Americans have been denied their constitutional right to vote, despite federal policies. This discrimination was not confined only to voting rights, but was expanded throughout the entire social landscape of the nation. The rejection of basic rights has been a continuity in American society and is still present nationwide. Despite federal legislation during Reconstruction …show more content…
Directly following the emancipation of the slaves, most southern states enacted black codes, or laws that discriminated against African Americans in order to control every aspect of their lives. According to the article “Black Codes”, although the laws varied state to state, they were unified in their success to create a subservient and dependable labor force after the loss of slave labor. In South Carolina, African Americans were confined in their choice of occupation to either a farmer or servant. All over the south, blacks were forced to sign labor contracts that would result in massive fines if broken. Since most African Americans were unable to pay the astronomical price of the fines, which could amount close to their earnings in one year, they were faced with unpaid labor to repay the fine, imprisonment, or beatings. In courts, they could only testify against fellow blacks, giving them no power in the judiciary branch whatsoever ("Black Codes"). These black codes perpetually kept the African Americans in slavery. They had freedom on paper, but, unfortunately, this did not transfer into real life. Southern contempt for federal legislature aimed at aiding African Americans started early. In 1872, the strong opposition of white southerners towards the Freedmen’s Bureau pressured Congress into shutting the aid organization ("Freedmen 's Bureau"). White southerners also found an issue in the African Americans’ newfound political voice. The Ku Klux Klan(KKK), founded in the early years of Reconstruction, terrorized blacks and their white supporters ("Ku Klux Klan"). This movement of intimidation and violence was aimed at keeping the African American political voice at bay, and served as evidence that support of the new rights given to

The Effects Of Inequality And Discrimination Of African Americans

Discrimination Toward African Americans African Americans have always been subjected to inequality and discrimination since the seventeenth century. Between the early seventeenth century and eighteenth century, slavery had been fairly common. As a result, many people never treated African Americans fairly because people often identified African Americans as slaves, regardless if they were free or not. By the end of the eighteenth century, slavery was beginning to be abolished, but only in the northern part of the United States. From the years 1789 to 1831, as free African Americans started to increase in amount, they sought and struggled for economic and political rights and also tried to defend them, while African American slaves showed resistance…

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Reconstruction: Report On The Condition Of The South, 1865

Whereas, the freedmen’s power in society are completely in the hands of the other people. He also discusses the aftermath of the Civil War in the South, stating that everything was ruined; politically, socially and economically as well. The personal lives of many of the Southern people was hard because they do not have slaves to maintain their land and the transition between slavery and free labor will be difficult because of the fact that the only type of labor system Southerners have are known as slavery. After the Fourteenth amendment passed, the freedmen enjoyed to the fullest but white southerners created obstacles in the way. Andrew Johnson, a deeply racist politician whose conception of democracy was limited to the white population and who ended up opening the door to the Southern Black Codes of 1865-66, which attempted to return blacks to a condition close to slavery (Foner).…

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The Importance Of The Reconstruction Era

They also forced them to have working papers or else they would be jailed and put to work without pay for several days at a plantation. If African Americans did have a job, the black codes acted as “antienticement measures designed to punish anyone who offered higher wages to a black laborer,” so even then African Americans could not earn a fair wage (Black Codes). Laws such as the Vagrant Law tried to keep whites from associating with freed people at all by having a fine of up to two hundred dollars. The Civil Rights of Freedmen had good parts to it, but then they added the word “provided” making an exception to their rights. All of these were ways for southerners to keep freed people oppressed (Foner, 7-11).…

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The Consequences Of Racism In The South

The consequences of this led to the Reconstruction time period, which lasted from 1865-1950s. The Reconstruction of the South proved to be a tough mission from the start as the South passed the “Black Codes.” Black codes prohibited free blacks from reading and writing, free speech, bear arms, assembling in groups, testifying against white citizens in court, and much more. The Black Codes was racism to its extremes. These actions made the Reconstruction even longer, which resulted in blacks gaining more power in the government. However, blacks had their powers short-lived as groups such as the Ku Klux Klan resorted to violence in order to bring back white supremacy in the South.…

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The Defeat Of Land Reform Case Study

Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization of whites who successfully used terrorist tactics to frighten both white and black Republicans in the South. The Enforcement Acts authorized the President to use the federal troops in order to enforce the laws and suspend the writs of habeas corpus. These acts enlarged federal power and were moderately successful in limiting the Ku Klux Klan’s activities. The Election of 1872 (p. 505) 22. Though Grant was reelected in 1872, what does the election reveal about the weaknesses within the Republican Party at that…

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Key Reasons And The Causes Of The Civil War

The act “created a new set of federal agents to help track runaway slaves and required authorities in the North to assist Southern slave catchers and return runaway slaves to their owners (pg 386) .” If anyone tried to help the slaves escape the south they faced harsh penalties including a one-thousand dollar fine and a year in jail. Many people were in disagreement with the act, but the southerners took it too far causing more hostility between the two sides. Also, the south would do anything in their power to preserve slavery because they argued that their economy depended heavily upon it. Little did they know, the north needed cotton as much as they did for their economy to prosper. Although, the north knew that cotton could still be produced without putting human beings through vigorous, harsh work until their backs broke.…

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The Causes And Cons Of Reconstruction

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.…

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The Red Scare Summary

Blacks effectively began to destroy anti-communist and their efforts. Following the judgment in the Supreme Court’s case Brown vs. Ferguson in 1954, white southerners began to fear the worse, and the red scare reached its strong point. “This resulted in anti-communist forming groups of their own such as the HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities) and the FBI as models, southern nationalists in every state in the region converted and constructed law enforcement and legislative agencies to pursue subversives in the civil rights movements”. (Woods, 2004). Poll taxes and literacy tests were placed in effect to attempt to prevent blacks from voting, and Jim Crow laws were placed in effect to further restrict blacks.…

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African Men Discrimination

African Americans have suffered immensely during this time of war and always thought sooner or later it would get better. At the time when they needed a job to have a sustainable life and support their families, it was nearly impossible to get a job because of unequal rights. According to the article, “The Grand Review” by Gallagher, Grayw32 W states, “ Women and most black men could not vote.” When laws are made African Americans cannot be apart of the decision process, where the laws affected their life. . Every day, hate crimes occurred but when justice needed to be serve in court, the African American community would have no in the say in court.…

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Formative Events In United States History Essay

During this time, the north and the south faced against one another in a fight over whether or not slavery should be legal or illegal. The north did not want slavery to be legal, but the south did. Slavery was such a huge part of the people’s lives in the south, and they depended on that free labor from slaves to continue to make a living on their plantations. The northern United States won the war, and slavery became illegal, but the lifestyle in the south rarely changed. Once the new law was made, it was rarely enforced in the southern states, which led to violence against the newly freed slaves.…

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Rights In The Reconstruction Era

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