Reconstruction’s Failure to Bring Social and Economic Equality

During the Reconstruction Era the southern whites used Black Codes to limit African-American civil rights and freedoms. Black Codes were put in place to regulate the lives of former slaves so that they were able to still have some control over them. With the Black Code in play; blacks were able to have limited rights. For example, they were allowed to have legal marriages, ownership of property, and some access to the courts. They were not allowed to serve on juries or in State militias, nor were they able to vote. The southerners made sure that the freed people were required to work on plantations, and if they failed to sign yearly contracts they would be arrested.

Former slaves were not allowed any weapons or access to the town, among other things. The codes stretched the law enough so that African-Americans were even forced to be “in the service of some white person or former owner”, and could not do many things without their express permission. (Document B) These laws were put into place by white men, dependent on the African-American’s continued labor for their farms and plantations to thrive. As the slave trade had greatly enhanced the economy of the South, white landowners were not eager to give up the majority of their workforce. Although legally, former slaves were considered free, the black codes forced them to stay in place and obey unfair laws. Without the word slavery ever mentioned, the black codes represented much of the South’s attitude towards African-Americans, destroying their personal rights as

Jim Crow Laws were state and local laws passed that segregated African Americans from white Americans in all public places in the South. These laws prevented African Americans from attending the same schools as white people or sitting in the same section on a bus. These laws started after the Reconstruction period in the Southern United States and almost everything became segregated. They segregated bathrooms, restaurants, and even drinking fountains.

Despite the arguments that Reconstruction’s social failure was caused sharecropping and the lack of military enforcement, white resistance towards African American equality was the primary reason as to why Reconstruction failed socially. During the period of Reconstruction, 1865-1877, Southern states had to be reconstructed so that ex-slaves could experience their rights after 250 years of bondage. Through all the Reconstruction that took place to allow ex-slaves to become equal to their white counterparts, Reconstruction still failed socially.

The Reconstruction Era was a period in American history distinguished by the efforts of many to rebuild the South after the end of the Civil War. Following the end of the Civil War, the South was left in an abominable state. Railroad tracks were ruined, homes were destroyed and even previously large bustling cities such as Charleston, Richmond, and Fredericksburg were left devastated. Economically, the South continued to fall since Southern money was now useless. Because it was essential to repair the South and reunite the Nation, Lincoln started the Reconstruction (1865-1877). These efforts, however, were in vain since the Reconstruction was a failure. Black Codes, secret societies restricted the rights of Blacks and the South continued to

After the Civil War, the southern United States was in pieces. The land had been demolished, the economy was in the gutter, and plantation owners no longer had a source of cheap labor. In order to keep the newly freed African-Americans socially below white people, Jim Crow Laws were made. Jim Crow Laws were laws that segregated people of color and whites. These laws prevented African-Americans from using the same facilities as whites, completing daily tasks, and limited the exchange between African-Americans and whites. Jim Crow laws were in place for about 100 years. From the end of the Civil War, to the end of the Civil Rights Movement these laws had an effect on the

During the period of reconstruction after the Civil War, The Reconstruction era occurred after the Civil War period, and lasted from 1864 to 1877. The Reconstruction period brought upon an era of Martial Law, a change of social consciousness towards slavery and the rights of African Americans, a New South with closer ties to the North. During the years of Reconstruction, African

During the years of 1865 and 1866, laws called the Black Codes were passed one by one in each state. These laws stated what colored people could and could not do. The Black Codes from Opelousas, Louisiana, state in section 3 that, “No negro

Former Confederate states were upset at having lost the Civil War and consequently the institution of slavery. White communities in these southern states imposed Black Codes on the newly freed black community in an effort to restore the imbalance of power between blacks and whites that existed before the Civil War. Each state crafted its own set of Black Codes and each solely applied to the black community. Some states wrote stricter laws than others, although their limitations for people of color were very similar at the core.

The Reconstruction era was the period that followed the end of the Civil War whose purpose was to reconstruct the United States. This was done to help rebuild the South and bring it back into the Union. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments gave African Americans some civil liberties, they prohibited slavery, gave national citizenship for every person that was born in the United States, and voting rights can not be denied because of their race or color. Looking at this era, I will discuss how it affected the society of the Americans, the economy and the laws that were passed. Although the Reconstruction Era tried to help from the end of the Civil War into the early twentieth-century it resulted a failure to establish the civil rights for the African Americans.

In 1865-1877, Reconstruction was the federal governments pursuit to untangle the problems resulting after the Civil War. in my opinion, the Reconstruction era was a failure despite the few accomplishments.It failed simply because the Congress did not protect blacks from the Ku Klux Klan, the black codes limited "blacks" from mostly everything, and the Compromise of 1877 removed troops causing "blacks" to suffer.

From the KKK and lynchings to public persecution, the 1920’s equaled hell for African Americans. Even though many African Americans moved North after World War I, 85% still resided in the Southern former slave states (Kyvig 19). African Americans still had few rights and racism was at a high. Members of the KKK resorted to lynchings; “lynching of blacks more than a hundred times a year between 1885 and 1900, and between fifty and seventy-five times a year from then until 1920” (Kyvig 169-170) to get their opinions of blacks across. They were also pitted against the government with laws; police forces took the side of racism by arresting African Americans for doing no wrong and letting whites get away with crimes against them.

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. The separation in practice led to conditions for African Americans that tended to be inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages. Segregation mainly applied to the Southern United States. Northern segregation was generally patterns of segregation in housing enforced by covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory union practices for decades. Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated.

The Jim Crow Laws were a set of laws established by southern states to successfully to eliminate African Americans from the American political and legal system--a de jure form of discrimination. These southern states (consisting of Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Kentucky) ensured white supremacy over African Americans by establishing laws that included no interracial marriages, segregation in schools, healthcare, public facilities, housing, entertainment, prison, free speech and libraries. In Mississippi, marriage of a white person with a "Negro" or "mulatto" or person having one-eighth or more "Negro" blood was void. New Mexico said that books shouldn't be shared by white and "Negro" children and that if "colored people" were to go to the library to read then the librarian need to set up a confined space for them. A white child being in custody of a black person was "unlawful" in South Carolina. 3

Jim Crow Laws were laws in the U.S. which enforced racial segregation within the South between 1877 and the civil rights movement’s beginning during the 1950’s (“Jim Crow Law” Britannica). Jim Crow Laws restricted many things for Blacks, under the doctrine of “separate but equal,” to be considered constitutional. These laws existed to not only keep blacks away from the whites, but to humiliate them, let them know they were below people of the white race. “The segregation principle was extended to parks, cemeteries, theatres, and restaurants in an effort to prevent any contact between blacks and whites as equals.” Contact between races was kept to a minimum in most places, with blacks having rare contact with whites. Jim Crow Laws, though, were not only legislated by state and local governments. There were unspoken laws and codes also referred to as Jim Crow Laws. “Unwritten rules barred blacks from white jobs in New York and kept them out of white stores in Los Angeles. Humiliation was about the best treatment blacks who broke such rules could hope for.” (Constitutional Rights Foundation “A Brief History of Jim Crow”). Blacks were treated as