Black Power and Progressive Allyship in Reconstruction America

[CATCH-UP NOTES]

• April 1861

• Charleston, SC, was one of the enslaver capitols of the world

  • Before AR, most important slaver port

  • After AR, was 2nd to New Orleans of slaver ports

• The anti-slavery party in the US no longer wanted to be a part of the US

  • Ultimately started the civil war

• Emancipation Proc. was a guarantee that slavery would be abolished when the war was won (1863)

• The Union army formally allows Black men to enlist (1863)

  • About 200k Black men and women and children participated in the war effort either as soldiers or essential workers

    • Women mainly did laundry, food, and farm work

Radical Republicans and Black Americans

• Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

  • Lincoln’s “10% plan”

  • Offered a path for former confederate states to come back to the Union if 10% of the voters (white men) swore to a loyalty oath to not go against the US again, alongside accepting abolitionism.

    • Wouldn’t apply to high-ranking officers

• Frederick Douglass to the Lincoln Administration “Sweep the South Clean!”

• March 3, 1865: Freedmen’s Bureau Act

  • Senator Charles Sumner said “The curse of slavery is still upon [Black Americans']

• The Freedmen’s Bureau was established in 1865

America’s First Social Safety Net and Federal Public Education System

• Freedmen’s Bureau

  • Plan to redistribute food and supplies to former slaves, resettle them on confiscated enslavers’ lands

  • Director was Col. Oliver H. Howard

    • Chief Officer and “The Christian General”

• The South before 1865, there wasn’t any public education

  • Schools were locally run

• Bureau Accomplishments

  • Provided rations to people across different races

    • Food was given to anyone who needed it

  • Freemen’s Savings and Trust Company

  • Healthcare

    • Makeshift hospitals were made in the immediate aftermath of the war

  • Interracial Education

    • 2000 schools were erected

    • Ages 5-90 could attend