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

• 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.

African American Struggles

• 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.

Ku Klux Klan

• 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.

Racial Discrimination

• Southern states enacted laws that increased racial discrimination.
• Literacy tests and poll taxes were used to disenfranchise black voters.

Literacy Tests

• Some states required voters to pass a literacy test.
• White voters were often given easier passages than African Americans.
• White election officials had the final say on who passed.

Poll Taxes

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

Grandfather Clause

• 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."

Jim Crow

• 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.

Struggle for Equality

• 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.