Congress tried many attempts to stop racism as reflected by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which gave emancipated African Americans several legal rights. They also passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment, which made free slaves U.S. citizens. However, many white supremacists were upset by these changes and started the “Old Time Ku Klux Clan” a group made to terrorize African Americans and scare them “back into their place”. Even white supremacist Congressmen passed black codes which limited the rights of former slaves such as testifying against whites and even loitering in public. The Ku Klux Clan ended up causing so much violence against African Americans that Congress had to pass the Ku Klux Clan Act to give African Americans military protection. …show more content…
On Easter Sunday over 140 white men and teenage boys lined up in Colfax, Louisiana to ready themselves for an attack against the African Americans who lived there. The African Americans of Colfax readied themselves for the fight and in the end a reported number of 165 people died at the Battle of Colfax Courthouse. This number was larger than any other incident of racial violence in American History and it is likely that there were many more dead further out from where they counted. The Whites in Colfax made their victory public by leaving most of the bodies from the Battle unburied encouraging African Americans to go view the dead. I believe that although African Americans were given civil rights and liberties during the Reconstruction Era due to racism many of their rights did not go into effect until many years after they were legalized because of groups like the Ku Klux Plan and even racist Congressmen I believe that Reconstruction failed due to
This upset Southern whites tremendously. In order to solve the problem, the Ku Klux Klan, which was formed in 1866 made a significant come back by jumping up their violence and intimidating acts. Their goal was “to intimidate blacks so that they would fear for their lives and stop supporting the Republican Party” (222). In order to accomplish this, the Klansmen set out wearing their full white cloaks to whip, shoot, and rape the freedmen who were able to vote. They made camp at the poll stations and gave warning to the African Americans who were planning to go to them in order to vote.
The passage of Reconstruction legislation, namely the Freemen’s Bureau Act, the Civil Rights Bill, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and the First Reconstruction Act of 1867, gave African Americans greater economic and political rights, ultimately contributing to the Klan’s formation. First, as John Faragher stated, the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau in March 1865 entitled former slaves to benefits such as “food, clothing, and fuel.” (Out of Many, p. 364) Then in 1866, with the passing of the Civil Rights Bill and Fourteenth Amendment, “full citizenship rights” were granted to former slaves, according to Faragher. (Out of Many, p. 362)
So in 1865, ex-Confederates formed the first Ku Klux Klan which targeted black supporters of Brownlow’s. Freedmen would suffer at the hands of the Klan by having their stuff burned and people beat. In 1873 the Supreme Court undercut the power of the Fourteen Amendment arguing that the amendment only offer few federal protections to citizens.
As a result of this, racist organizations were founded to wreaked havoc on former slaves. Secret societies in the southern united states, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia used violence against the blacks. Their goal was often to keep blacks out of politics. Our textbook states, “In other states, where blacks were a majority or where the populations of the two races were almost equal, whites used outright intimidation and violence to undermine the Reconstruction regimes” (Brinkley 368). The people involved in such organizations were using violence to take away the fifteenth amendment right from the former slaves.
During the Reconstruction Era which took place between the years of 1865-1877, has marked one of the most powerful years throughout history. The union won the civil war in favor of the north, the Emancipation Proclamation was established a few years back, and slavery was abolished in the southern states which gave blacks equal rights and opportunities as others. Then, a fearless and rebellious group was created. This group was founded in Tennessee in 1866 and had huge disapproval for civil rights towards the blacks. They named themselves the Ku Klux Klan.
After the freeing of the slaves began the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, better known as the KKK, is a major terrorist group based off the idea of an all white nation. White supremacists, open and closeted, have been the leading cause of the deaths and incarceration of black men. The fall slavery of became the rise of segregation. Blacks were separated, tormented, and were treated as lesser.
A change in legislation brought slavery back to America in a new way. Tisbe explains, “The blatant racist President Andrew Johnson who ascended to the presidency after Lincon’s assassination, ordered that the redistributed lands be returned to former enslavers, and many freed people went back to working on the land under the sharecropping system”(Tisby, 91). Even though the slaves were freed and were not considered slaves under the law, they were still treated like slaves working under strenuous conditions for very little to no money. Not only was the sharping system implemented, but terrorist groups also aimed to disrupt the lives of Africans. The KKK was notorious for lynching, raping, and torturing Black Americans.
White supremascists Shawn Berry Lawrence Russell Brewer and John King started a major racial controversy by murdering James Byrd Jr. It came as a shock to people when, for the first time in history, the press bothered to notice the lynching of a black man in Texas, society was astonished that they cared with such passion and vigor. Many American citizens found this appalling considering the country’s indifference to racial violence. Had it not been for the lynching of James Byrd Jr., the Hate Crimes Prevention Act would not exist, therefore countless acts of brutality would take place because there would not be any rules or resistance impeding them from committing the crime.
Not long since the 20th century, there were violent manifestations of hostility toward African-Americans in the North and South. Between 1900 to 1908, anti-black riots broke out in cities such as New York, and in scattered locations in the South. One of the most important civil rights organizations, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed partly in response to the high rates of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois which was the resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. As a matter of fact, African-Americans were actually lynched within half a mile of President Lincoln’s home. Their cup was filled, and they hardly had the voice to cry out against this outrage.
This struggle for social status made African Americans even more vulnerable to hate crimes, which often went unnoticed and unpunished. The Ku Klux Klan targeted African Americans after emancipation due to the mobilization of black voters within the Republican Party. These dynamics were part of a more extensive system of racial capitalism where race determined social and labor hierarchies, keeping African Americans in a lower position. Despite the abolition of slavery, systemic racism and discrimination against African Americans and Native Americans persisted well into
Former slaves who “tried to vote or participate in politics [were] likely to be singled out for “punishment”” by a terrorist organization named as the Ku Klux Klan, until the Congress passed the Force Bill in 1871 that gave the federal authorities the right to arrest and pursue active members of the KKK. But, the bill appeared to be only figurative as not really much of the Klan’s members were prosecuted (Hazen
A pamphlet called “The Ideals of the Ku Klux Klan” identifies the ideals as follow: “Every effort to wrest from White Men the management affairs in order to transfer it to the control of black or any other color, or permit them to share in its control is an invasion of our sacred constitutional prerogatives and violation of divinely established laws. Every effort to wrest from the White man control of this country must be resisted. . . We would not rob the colored population of their tights, but we demand that they respect the rights of the White Race in whose country they are permitted to reside. When it comes to the point that they cannot and will not respect those rights, they must be reminded that this is a White Man’s country, so they will seek for themselves a country more agreeable to their tastes and aspirations” (Ideals of the Ku Klux
According to PBS.com in 1871, the government passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which gave the government to take action on the terrorist groups. The Ku Klux Klan started off as just former confederates and eventually turned into a terrorist group full of people that believed in white supremacy. They felt the only way to show the supremacy was brutally torturing and or killing African Americans because of their race. Though the act on the KKK was created when the Panic of 1873 occurred, all attention from the North made its way
Through the movement, activists were able to successfully create lasting changes legally, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited discrimination based on race and removed barriers to voting for African Americans. In response to the rulings made, it is said that “each sought to impose its version of reality on the society, and thereby each hoped to shape the reality within which the other had to function.” (Bloom & Hatcher, 2019, 12) Even with the amount of backlash, whether it be violent or not, the movement continued forward with their actions, knowing that there needs to be change for a better future. The Ku Klux Klan became the main cause of the obstacles in their path to success, for example, they “invented an education crisis at a time when the quality of the educational system was actually improving. High school diplomas were at one time rare commodities but were becoming increasingly common, especially among Catholic immigrants and African Americans.”
The Ku Klux Klan forced African Americans into submission, which made them become more united. The Klan was against the mixing of races and did not like the idea of integration of the blacks, so they committed acts of violence. The Ku Klux Klan believed that people should be from their own individual race, but in reality, there is not a pure