Despite the Nadir: The Rise of Black America 1876-1929

The Gains of Reconstruction

• 13th Amendment (1865)

  • People were free unless they were convicted of a crime

  • Slavery was overall abolished

• 1866 Civil Rights Act

  • Guaranteed (theoretically) that black people’s freedom of movement was not to be infringed upon

  • Stated that all states within the US had to respect abolition and abolition

• 14th Amendment (1868)

  • Equity Clause included

  • Guaranteed birthright citizenship

    • Millions of people had been born here, yet had no form of citizenship

  • Grants all citizens the right to due process

  • Ratified 3 years after the abolitionist movements

• 15th Amendment (1870)

  • Granted black men the right to vote

  • Feminists tried to incorporate women into it

    • Republicans thought it was too far at the time

  • Very few black men will be voting thinking about themselves only

    • Many would make sure to think about the whole community

  • More than 2000 Black men elected to municipal, state, and federal office

  • Hiram Revels was one of the first Black US Senators, which came from NC

  • 2000 Freedmen’s schools built, educating more than 250,000 Black Southerners

Whitelash | 1865-Present

• Black Codes

  • Began in Mississippi, the summer of 1865

  • Adopted by the former Confederate states

  • Vagrancy Law

    • Existed in every former Confederate state

  • State sanctioned slavery still exists

• Sharecropping

  • Some Black families chose to stay on the lands in which they were enslaved

    • Led to toxic relationship with white people who didn’t lose their land

    • Black people would continue to farm for those landowners

      • Wouldn’t be paid in cash

      • Rather, it ran on Credit and crops

• 1861, 2 years after the civil war ends, abolitionist movement ends, 1 year after the civil rights movment is passed, the KKK is founded in west Tennesse in 1867

• KKK

The Corrupt Bargain: Election 1876 + “Fraud of the Century”

• Representative Rutherford B. Hayes (R-Ohio) vs. Governor Samuel Tillman (D-New York)

  • Disputed, VERY close election

• Hayes would be sworn in as the 3rd Republican president of the US

  • In exchange for the Republican party and congress to end the reconstruction project

• In exchange for a Republican victory, Democrats negotiated the end of Reconstruction in the South

  • Millions of Americans didn’t agree with the Federal government providing social services to the Freedmen’s bureau

  • Reconstruction had lasted for 12 years at this point, with funds being funneled

Black and Brown Power in NC: 1865-1901

• 1868-1901: Black men elected, served in state legislature

• NC had always been some sort of safe haven who didn’t want to live in mainstream English societies, with thousands of English colonial settlers

• 1865: Shaw University founded in Raleigh

  • First HBCU in NC to offer programs to women

  • 5 more HBCUs founded in NC between 1867-1877

• 1865: Princeville, Hayti were founded as all-Black communities

• NC Rep. James Harris (1832-1891); NC Senator Abraham Galloway (1837-1870)

  • Co-wrote Constitution of 1868 at state convention

  • Universal suffrage granted to ALL men until 1901

• 1783-1835, NC state constitution allowed land-owning free Black/Native men the right to vote

1866-1872: Lowry War of Robeson County

First Migration 1877-1890 “The Exodusters”

. Some ways that white Americans legally or extralegally allowed themselves to terrorize Black Americans after the sabotage of the Reconstruction included adopting Black Codes, Sharecropping, and the KKK being formed. Black Codes began in the summer of 1865 in Mississippi, which were primarily adopted by former Confederate states. These were designed to enforce segregation and a greater racial divide among the people.