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Reconstruction On African American Freedom

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Freedom is not a term with a simple definition or interpretation. While the basic understanding of freedom is for one to have certain rights and liberties as a citizen, the American notion and application of freedom have certainly changed since its very beginning as a nation. A crucial part of America’s history that challenged the idea of true “American freedom” for citizens was the Reconstruction Era. Although the Union troops were pulled out of the South and ended de jure segregation, the emergence of Jim Crow laws at the end of Reconstruction facilitated de facto segregation. Instead of completely achieving equal freedom, Reconstruction ultimately hindered African American’s freedom with the emergence of the black codes that resurfaced again …show more content…

It was made clear by sentiments of African Americans that “any plan for the Reconstruction of the nation would have to be premised on the continued presence of African Americans” (Lecture Recon.). After Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction “enabled the Southern states to rejoin the Union without black suffrage” which caused the African American population to struggle to secure suffrage all the way up to and after the civil rights movement (Lecture Recon.). However, what may have been the worst result of Presidential Reconstruction was when the “Southern states established new state governments and constitutions that immediately resolved to curb African Americans’ newfound freedom through the passage of the Black Codes,” which were very similar to “the slave codes that had existed before the war” (Lecture Recon.). These black codes subjected African Americans to signing annual contracts, that if violated, would result in their arrest. After these people were arrested, they were then hired to work in the system known as convict leasing where instead of jail they would end up in plantations, mines or to the highest bidder, for committing even simple crimes. These codes also allowed the “forcible ‘apprenticeship’ of black orphans or children of black parents who the state deemed ‘unfit’” (Lecture Recon.). Thus, black suffrage …show more content…

There are major historical narratives pertaining to Reconstruction that can offer insight on what is true American Freedom: The Dunning School view of the 1920s-1930s reflecting white southern elites, the Revisionist view from the 1960s, and the Post-Revisionist view of the 1970s to present. The white elites who were upset by the loss of the confederacy and resented Radical Reconstruction felt betrayed by the of “corruption presided over by unscrupulous carpetbaggers, traitorous scalawags, and ignorant freedmen” (Lecture Recon.). The Dunning School view that emerged in the early twentieth century supported these white supremacists’ ideas and popularized that “black suffrage had been a political blunder and that the Republican state governments in the South that rested upon black votes had been corrupt, extravagant, unrepresentative, and oppressive” (Lecture Recon.). Foner argues that “liberals” started “echoing white southerner’s complaints that Reconstruction violated principles of good government by expelling me of property from power,” and that “gullible lower-class voters throughout the country” were being coerced (119). Eventually, the nation experienced “such travesties… as the Tweed Ring of New York City” because of the additional voters (119). Overall, this view of Reconstruction condemned the

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