Radical Reforms For African Americans

Many people will tell you that African Americans were free during the reconstruction after the civil war, which on paper may be the case. Life during this time was getting better, however, it still wasn’t good. African Americans faced multiple different forms of oppression that would make it seem that they were in prison. A few of these were the black codes, and the government's reaction to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. However the amendments were not meant to have the states to poke holes in them, they were made to give freed African Americans the same right as everyone else.

After the Civil War, the southern economy was in shambles because it so heavily relied on slavery. Southerners begged the question as to how should we rebuild our economy with the 4 million people who are now free? The answer was simple because with the 13th Amendment loophole, African Americans could be treated as slaves again if they were criminals. This lead to a massive incarceration of African Americans who were arrested for minor crimes like loitering and vagrancy(INSERT XIII). They were prisoners who had to rebuild the southern

     Certain black codes pertained to whites as well. It was unlawful for a black to marry a white, or vice versa. Anyone found convicted of the crime could be sent to prison for life. Many contracts were drawn up as ‘permissions’ for certain blacks. If a freedman ever broke a work contract, he would be forced to forfeit his wages for one full year. Any civilian was permitted to capture and return freedmen who broke their contract. They were rewarded five dollars plus ten cents for every mile he was captured from his owner. However, if anyone was found attempting to persuade a black to break his contract, or give a deserting black any aid, he/she could be convicted of a misdemeanor and forced to pay a fine.

In the south, for social, they still had problems with race. New laws made it hard for southern African Americans to enjoy the improvements of transportation. Politically, there were laws that allowed segregation and made it really hard for African Americans to enjoy their free life. economically, although the south remained mostly agricultural the south began to develop timber industries, also because there main source of profit was slaved, after slavery was abolished that took away a lot of the South’s major income, also iron and coal deposits in the southern Appalachian mountains gave rise to steel production in Alabama.

During the Reconstruction Era, African Americans got more opportunities which led to their growth. Some of these opportunities were education and many different work choices that wouldn't have happened without Reconstruction. In the history alive article it explained how after the Civil War, people built schools and colleges for black children across the south increasing their education greatly. Also, the reading ability rate of African-Americans went from 5% during slavery to more than 50% after slavery. Because of their ability to go to school, African Americans learned how to read and other educational experiences which made them have the same rights as white people providing for growth. After the Civil War, between 1865 to 1903 22,000 more black people than before owned business’. This led to success of African Americans in financial ways gaining more money. After reconstruction a lot of African-Americans started their own business leading to the success rates of African Americans going up greatly. Furthermore, 1/5 of the new office holders in the south were actually African Americans after reconstruction and they were all smart they were all smart, hard-working, focused, and ambitious. This was huge for the black community because they had never had black government politicians before. This made it so the government in the south was less white supremacy and more equality, bringing in new opinions from African American

Following Lincoln's death (?), Radical Republicans took control of Congress and attempted to create a social and constitutional revolution. To do so, they amended the Constitution and imposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Although the purpose of these amendments was to create black equality, the South resisted acceptance of these changes so that this could not be possible. In turn, there really were not any social developments even though the constitution had been changed.

During these years of radical reconstruction, the African Americans were going through some very tough times. The laws that were put on them were harsh and unreasonable. All they wanted to do was becomes socially and economically apart of the United States. Groups like the KKK were unfair towards the blacks and made their lives miserable by holding rallies and killing them. As a result of reconstruction, the blacks were not given social or economic equality because of laws like the black codes and Jim Crow laws, and the rebellious whites in the south. These African Americans struggled just to support themselves, but whites eventually accepted them at the end of the

The Civil War and the period of Reconstruction brought great social, political, and economic changes to American society. These changes affected the way everyone in the nation was used to living. Slavery was a huge thing that led the economy for the south, providing a free source of labor, which would soon lead to a lot of change in the southern economy when emancipated. Slavery also did not allow the African Americans to have any rights or participate in any political things. White people dominated the nation and restricted all that the African Americans were allowed to do. The emancipation of slavery led to changes in economics, politics, and brought many social changes. These changes ultimately had positive effects on the world, and these changes are still seen today as they continued into the 20th century.

The long Gilded Age of America started in 1870 and lasted until 1930. It started right after the Civil War and was a period of extreme economic and industrial growth. After the war, a period known as Reconstruction started. The Reconstruction was meant to rebuild the economy of the South. However, the Reconstruction not only didn’t help the South that much, it also didn’t help the newly freed African Americans. According to Eric Foner’s book Give Me Liberty Volume 2, “African-Americans’ understanding of freedom was shaped by their experience as slaves and their observation of the free society around them.” Even after the Civil War, life was still not good for African Americans. One deadly system that was very similar to slavery was the convict leasing system. According to the Reconstruction Amendments, the 13th Amendment outlawed all slavery except ones “ except as a punishment for crime”. Those few words were enough for many people to exploit this by falsely accusing people(many of them African American) of crime and forcing them to work in horrific conditions such as mines and factories. In the Slavery By Another Name video, it told of situations when convicts were through with their time and yet would be forced to stay by the harsh rule of the place they were working at. Many blacks would get sent to prison and then leased for minor misdemeanors or idiotic actions such as stealing a pig or the “Vagrancy Statutes”(from Slavery By Another Name). These statutes basically

Slavery was a huge issue that both helped and hurt the Union during the Civil War, and later in the Reconstruction. African Americans had to make sacrifices in order to make reality their dream of being freed from the chains of slavery. America reached many changes through the beginnings of Civil Rights legislations, the changes in the power of government, as well as the amount of racism and it’s effects on society.

African Americans throughout the road to gain racial equality exercised many methods in order to attain such liberties. We start our exploration by viewing the most paramount methods to acquire racial equality; these methods included lobbying public officials through the court system and through peaceful public protests. We'll lastly address the violent methods used to gain racial equality but see how they were mostly unavailing.

The newly freed slaves were gaining rights that were always only a dream with legal marriage, education, and power over their children’s lives. However, Black Codes were being used to recreate slavery and were making it hard for African Americans to own property and function in society. (Lecture 1/29/16) Their rights were not given without many exceptions including that African Americans who were convicted of felonies were being put back to work on farms that they were just given the freedom to leave, and all of a sudden it was much easier to get a felony charge for being black and not having a job were considered committing a crime. President Johnson’s neglect of action in southern states was making it nearly impossible for the former slaves to function in society, even after The Civil Rights Act of 1866, and leads into the creation of the Ku Klux Klan

There were many new job opportunities for African Americans. There were many new factories being built in the south, they could help build the railroad, the sharecropping system, and the homestead act gave them the opportunity to go west and start their own farms. Sharecropping was a very corrupt system. Former plantation owners would let the African Americans grow crops on their land, but a portion of the profits would have to go to the land owners, and many times they took advantage of the blacks. According to an ex-slave who had been a part of the sharecropping system, they could only make enough money to feed themselves and to buy a pair of overalls as most of the money went to the whites (Document 6). Many times the whites would take advantage of the fact that many of the blacks were uneducated. Although very few of the African Americans were educated, there were a few who had gotten an education and become very smart. One was W.E.B. Dubois. Dubois was a highly educated civil rights leader who focused on education and wanted to increase the black graduation rates. A quote from The Souls of Black Folks “We ought not forget that despite the pressure of poverty, and despite the active discouragement and even ridicule of friends, the demand for higher training steadily increases amount Negro growth.” (Document 9). Although African Americans jobs

     In 1877 Raeford B. Hayes pulled all the Federal troops from the south . He felt that reconstruction was over and that whites should take back over the land that first owned. This really effected black share-croppers, because this meant that white were taking back their land and they could make the laws about how the debt was paid back to the white land owners. The whites fixed the scales to were the black share-cropper would not have the correct amount of crops for the year. Also many blacks could not add or do the calculations that the whites used to figure out the amount of debt that was paid, so they could not tell if the white land owner was doing then wrong. This problem proved that education was the best way for blacks to become equal.

* The ways that the south reinvented itself was through attempts in rebuilding their farms and negotiating new labor agreements with their former slaves. This method failed by the majority of southern land owners being to prideful or greedy to pay decent wages of the time. The south also became known for their railway system and is now the standard for development. The railway system brought urban life to the south through city growth and the growth of the iron industry. The southern people used their iron industry as their main competing industry with the northern. In these industries it was uncommon for black southerners to be allowed to work in the factories. Poor whites would be hired over blacks in the rail yards as well. The south being as picky to who they hired only bettered their communities rather than those of both black and white communities. These changes brought our country into an era of segregation. With segregation starting in the following years after the civil war it kept the south from truly catching up to the northern culture and industry because of their hate. If southern people would have been willing to bend more with their own losses after the war and been more willing to give equality to their former slaves things would have turned out