1.06 Face of freedom

How Are Freedoms Limited?

The period after the Civil War initially promised progress for African Americans due to new constitutional amendments.
The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery.
The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments guaranteed equal treatment and voting rights.
However, these rights soon faced limitations through state laws that undermined the amendments.
The sharecropping system kept many former slaves tied to the land.
African Americans experienced violence, poverty, and state-supported discrimination.
Historian Rayford Logan termed this period "the nadir of American race relations."
African Americans began a civil rights struggle against terror and prejudice that continues today.
The Ku Klux Klan led a terror campaign against African Americans, using harassment, intimidation, and murder.

Black codes were enacted soon after the Civil War to restrict civil rights for African Americans.
These codes aimed to maintain a cheap labor source and uphold the social hierarchy.
Black codes prohibited African Americans from:
- Carrying weapons.
- Voting.
- Serving on juries.
- Testifying in court against white citizens.
- Marrying white citizens.
- Traveling without permits.
Some codes restricted African Americans' ability to own land.
Poor, unemployed African Americans could be arrested for lacking homes or money.
The codes varied by state and were present in both northern and southern states.
The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) was ratified to abolish Black Codes.
- Affirmed African Americans' citizenship.
- The "due process" clause prohibited state governments from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
- Mandated equal protection of the laws for all citizens.
While the Fourteenth Amendment effectively ended the Black Codes, it did not end segregation and discrimination.
Some African American groups prioritized developing their communities over integrating with the white community, focusing on directing their own churches, schools, and institutions.
Black codes served as a precursor to the Jim Crow laws that emerged at the end of the 19th century.

Between the end of the Black Codes and the passage of Jim Crow laws, African Americans experienced marginal improvements.
Economic conditions at the end of the 19th century hindered progress.
Southern cotton production resumed, but market prices had been cut in half due to other countries growing their own cotton during the Civil War.
Banks that had loaned money to the Confederate government faced difficulties collecting debts.
Credit became scarce.
An economic panic in 1873 led to bank closures, railroad bankruptcies, and a stock market collapse.
Loss of political power led many white Southerners to lash out at African Americans.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a primary group terrorizing African Americans.

The KKK started as a social club for former Confederate soldiers in Tennessee in 1866.
It evolved into a terrorist group dedicated to white supremacy.
The KKK aimed to prevent African Americans from exercising their new political power through:
- Intimidation of voters.
- Burning schools.
- Destroying homes of black and sympathetic white citizens.
- Lynching (public hanging without trial) to instill fear.
Federal government response:
- The Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 gave the government power to supervise elections in Southern states.
- The government could employ federal troops against Klan violence.
- President Ulysses Grant used the Enforcement Acts to arrest and imprison some Klan leaders, which diminished Klan violence in the late 1870s.
White supremacy re-asserted itself in many parts of the South, making extreme tactics less necessary.

Poll taxes, an annual tax required before voting, prevented many sharecroppers from voting due to lack of funds.

To allow only white citizens to vote, many Southern states created a grandfather clause.
It stated that anyone whose father or grandfather had been eligible to vote before January 1, 1867, was guaranteed the right to vote.
This date was significant because freed slaves did not have the right to vote before then.
The grandfather clause, poll taxes, and literacy tests disenfranchised many African Americans.
Critics argued these measures violated the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibits denying the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

After Reconstruction ended in 1877, the government seemed to abandon African Americans and white sympathizers.
The Supreme Court did not overturn obstacles for African American voters.
African Americans faced increased segregation from white society.
At the end of the 19th century, Southern states created Jim Crow laws, which mandated racial segregation in schools, hospitals, parks, and on railroads.
These laws were named after a white minstrel who used blackface to create an offensive stereotype of an African American.

Many believed segregation laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld segregation as constitutional if services provided to white and black citizens were of equal quality.
However, equality in theory differed greatly from equality in practice.
Segregated schools showed disparities: white students had new textbooks and clean facilities, while African Americans had outdated and inadequate resources.
African Americans had to fight for their rights without federal government support.
This period was considered the nadir of race relations in the United States.
Many African Americans felt their only option was to leave the South to escape poverty, violence, and discrimination.