The Civil War was one of America’s most trying and troubling times. Following the Civil War was Reconstruction, which posed an important question that would affect the country forever, “What do we do with the South?” During Reconstruction, the Government was faced with a plethora of difficult questions to answer and a series of difficult situations, but the topic at hand was the same reason the Civil War started in the first place: African Americans. The statement “After the Civil War, the only way to truly enfranchise former slaves was by effectively disenfranchising their former masters” is true because white Southerners would constantly and consistently attempt to undermine African Americans. There were many ways that white Southerners used to belittle African Americans; the creation of Black Codes were one of these ways. Black Codes were laws created by Southern states that had the intention of dwindling and restricting the African Americans’ new found rights. These laws were passed in the Democratic dominated South where white Southerners wanted themselves separate and thought of them as inferior. African Americans had little protection from the law, besides the Thirteenth Amendment, until the North sent their military down to help the Southerners see African Americans as equal (Document C). By …show more content…
This was done via segregation. Whites and African Americans had separate public facilities, such as schools. African Americans were elated having their own education system since they did not posses one prior to Reconstruction. Later on there was a court case Plessy v. Ferguson that coined the notion “separate but equal.” Even though that most African Americans were content with having their own schooling system, it was only theirs to begin with because of white Southern oppression, which could have dissipated if the rebels were
The National Women Suffrage Association, as you can no doubt tell, was National. Led by the high-minded members, nameely Stanton and Anthony, the NWSA wanted a federal way to gain rights. The Governments that were created in reconstruction Blacks had majority Republican Party was super strong Democrats and scalawags: Democrats called white southies who were republican “scalawags”
What ultimately were these codes designed to do? The Mississippi Black Codes were laws passed by the Southern government to restrict the freedom of the blacks. These codes were to restrict the blacks from engaging in whites ' activities despite them being freed from slavery. The blacks were offered free society and were free to demonstrate their liberations and were allowed to own personal families as women also left working in fields and house servants.
On June 2 1865 the United States entered into its bloodiest battle it had ever gotten into since the founding of the country. Over 600,000 people died in battle and all over the issue of slavery. When the civil war was over many thought that slavery had ended and that black people would get the freedom that had been wanting. Although the civil war had ended, white southerners kept African Americans as slaves under new laws passed called Black Codes. After the civil war, African Americans wanted more rights and more freedom.
Although slavery had been outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, it continued in many southern states. In an effort to get around laws passed by Congress, southern states created black codes, which were discriminatory state laws which aimed to keep white supremacy in place. While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans, their primary purpose was to fulfill an important economic need in the postwar South. To maintain agricultural production, the South had relied on slaves to work the land. Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their ties to the land.
During the Reconstruction Era from 1865 to 1877, Southern white people were segregated to a large extent between wealthy plantation owners and poor white farmers. Both E. B. Seabrook and a New York Times’ writer compare poor white farmers’ horrid lifestyles to freed slaves because there was an extreme similarity between the two. Although the slaves were emancipated as a result of the Civil War, they underwent economic hardships similar to poor white farmers in the South. In fact, the New York Times author makes the argument that the poor whites lived in a worse condition than freed blacks. - “The use of slave labor… tended to create a monopoly in the hands of the capitalists, and increased, in an almost insuperable degree, the difficulty of a poor man’s rising, but making nearly impossible the enlarging of his sphere of operations” (Seabrook).
There were many ways the Southern states tried to deny equal rights to African Americans. For example, the Jim Crow Laws were created in the 1890s by such southern states as Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina,and Florida, segregating the races in such places such as railroads, restaurants, education, and libraries. An amendment that should have prevented the Jim Crow Laws was the 14th Amendment because it stated “equal protection of the laws” for every citizen. Another example how the South tried to restrict the African Americans was the creation of the Black Codes, which allowed white employers to give African Americans very low wages or to arrest jobless African American; these codes were justly viewed as another form of slavery. The 13th
The process of black slavery taking route in colonial Virginia was slow. Black slavery mostly became dominant in the 1680s. Slaves became the main labor system on plantations. The amount of white indentured servants declined so the demand for black slaves became necessary in the mid-1660s. The number of white indentured servants that Virginia had up until the mid 1660s, was enough to meet white peoples labor needs.
Black codes came into the picture after the civil war. Black codes were mainly used to put black people into a position as similar to slavery as possible. Later, Jim Crow laws came into America. They were used as a way to continue oppressing and separating black people. For hundreds of years, there have been countless laws made to justify devaluing black lives and protect the legality of slavery.
Exacerbating the situation, a notoriously racist President, Andrew Johnson had been actively avoiding the Reconstruction issue of black rights, believing that African Americans had no roles to play in the era (Foner, 2008). Arousing the strongest opposition in Johnson’s reign were the Black Codes, a series of laws designed to control black life. And although former slaves were granted some rights - legal marriage, some access to the courts and property ownership (to an extent), but they imposed restrictions too,
These codes varied based on the states, but included aspects such as denying African Americans the right to vote, serve on juries, testify in court against southern whites, own property, attend public schools, and also included a mandate where they were forced to work low income, non-desirable jobs. This was not at all a more desirable situation for the freedmen in the south than they had when they were enslaved, so they had to turn again to the Northern leadership for help. At a convention in Alexandria, Virginia, a group of black men urged the North to help because they stood side by side with each other and fought for the same things in the war, and that nothing but military protection would protect the freedmen from falling back into what southern whites believed to be “their rightful
24 November 2015 The Real Death of Reconstruction There is no easy way to decide who can be held accountable for the end of the Reconstruction Era. Attempts to rebuild the South ceased to exist in 1877, just over ten years after the Confederacy surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. It seemed as though everything was on the right track in 1876, the one hundred year anniversary of The United States. That was, however, until the South waged conflict against black and white citizens of The United States.
Laws of segregation started in the north during the civil war (William V. Moore). Black people were segregated from railway cars, theaters, schools, prisons, and hospitals. After the 13th amendment was passed, slaves had some freedom, but then Andrew Johnson took up the presidency when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and he was a supporter of states rights. Taking advantage of state’s rights southern states started to pass the “black codes”. Mississippi enacted the first law of the black codes.
In the period of reconstruction, there was a lack of racial equality and racism towards blacks. The 13th amendment abolished slavery, with the exception of allowing it as a punishment for a crime (“Thirteenth Amendment” 19). Although it abolished slavery, there was still a lack of equality towards blacks. The Black Codes were state laws in the south, that were implemented in 1866. These laws limited the rights of African Americans and were
Long after the passing of the emancipation proclamation clause, African Americans still lived in a time where the battle for equality was in high demand. With the Jim Crow law being deeply rooted in the southern states, this prohibited all African Americans from their citizens’ rights. They lived in a world where it exhibited disenfranchisement, segregation, racial violence, the dominance of white power, and all from local to state levels the prevention from entering any social locations. African Americans new that they could not live like this anymore. So, African Americans had a plan and it was to seek revolution: The Civil Rights Movement.
After the Civil War ended, slavery in the United States was abolished, but this did not end the discrimination and the injustices that black people faced. In the south, the main source of a steady income was cotton and apparently there can't be cotton without slaves. With obvious anger and desperation to regain slavery, the black codes were created in 1865. The Black codes could be described as,“ White southerners, seeking to control the freedmen (former slaves), devised special state law codes. Many northerners saw these codes as blatant attempts to restore slavery.”