Chapter 17 Section 3 & 4

The South and Change

African Americans in Government

• Shortly after the Civil War, African Americans played an important role in politics both as voters and elected officials.

African Americans in Government

• Between 1869-1880, 16 African Americans served in the House of Representatives and 2 in the Senate.

Hiram Revels

• An ordained minister who recruited African American soldiers during the Civil War. • Was elected to the U.S. in 1870.

Blanche K. Bruce

• A former escaped slave who taught in a school for African Americans.

• Was elected to the U.S. in 1874.

Scalawags

• White southerners who supported Republican reconstruction efforts. • Others southerners called them this name meaning “scoundrel”.

Carpetbaggers

• Northern whites who moved to the south after the war, many times in search of cheap land. • Called this because they usually carried their belongings in a cheap bag made from carpet fabric.

Resistance to Reconstruction

• Most white Southerners opposed any effort to give African Americans rights.

The Ku Klux Klan

• Organization that used fear and violence to deny rights to freed men and women. • Killed thousands of African Americans and their white supporters.

The Ku Klux Klan

• Burned African American homes, schools, and churches. • They had strong support from planters and Democrats across the South.

The Ku Klux Klan

• In 1870 and 1871 Congress passed several laws to allow the federal government to fight the Klan.

Education

• African Americans with help from the Freedman’s Bureau built many schools throughout the South. • African Americans and white students generally would attend different schools.

Education

• Only very few schools were

integrated,

including white and African American students.

Sharecropping

• African Americans still had a difficult time purchasing any land of their own. • In this system a landowner rented a plot of land to a sharecropper, along with a crude shack, some tools and seed and maybe a mule.

Sharecropping

• The sharecropper worked the land and in return would give a landowner a share of his harvested crops. • Landowners collected a large share of the harvest and it became little better than slavery for the sharecropper.

End of Reconstruction

• During Grant’s presidency, or administration, Northerners began to feel it was time for the South to take care of their own problems.

End of Reconstruction

• Old radical leaders began to disappear from politics. Thaddeus Stevens died in 1868. • Southern Democrats began to jump on the declining interest in reconstruction.

The Republicans Split

• Reports of

corruption,

dishonest or illegal activities, in Grant’s administration caused some Republicans to question radical leadership .

The Republicans Split

• The

Liberal Republicans

were formed, seeking peaceful reconciliation with the South and Southern whites.

Amnesty Act

• In 1872, Liberal Republicans passed this law which pardoned most former Confederates which allowed for nearly all Southern whites to vote and hold political office again.

Amnesty Act

• Democrats soon gained control of all the state governments. • In states where African Americans were in the majority and would have voted Republican, the Klan made sure they were not allowed to vote through violence.

Weakening Republican Party

• Scandal after scandal rocked Grant’s administration causing many to doubt Republicans.

Weakening Republican Party

•

Panic of 1873-

was an economic downturn which caused small banks to close and a stock market crash. Businesses shut down and thousands were out of work.

• Blame fell on the Republican Party.

Election of 1874

• Democrats gained seats in the Senate and won control of the House.

• For the first time since the Civil War, the Democrats controlled a part of the federal government.

Rutherford B. Hayes

• Governor of Ohio, he is elected president in 1876. • He was a moderate Republican who appealed to the Liberal Republicans and Democrats because of his soft views on reconstruction.

Reconstruction declared over

• Shortly after taking office, Hayes traveled through the South. • Hayes’ announced his intention of allowing Southerners to handle racial issues.

Reconstruction declared over

• Basically sending the message that the federal government would no longer attempt to reshape Southern society. • Democrat controlled state government now could bring in new laws to regulate African Americans with no fear of federal interference .

Voting Restrictions

• The 15th Amendment had stated that no one could be denied voting rights based on race, but Southern Democrats found ways to get around the law.

Poll Tax

• Voters had to pay a small fee in order to vote, most African Americans could not afford the fee, thus they could not vote.

Literacy Test

• Voters had to read or explain difficult sections of the state or federal constitution in order to vote. • Most African Americans had little education, thus they could not vote.

Grandfather Clause

• Stated that if your father or grandfather had voted in previous elections then you could as well if you failed the literacy test.

• This ensured that even uneducated whites could still vote

Jim Crow Laws

• These laws required

segregation,

or the separation of the races, in almost every public place in the South. • The Supreme Court upheld these laws in

Plessy vs. Ferguson

case of 1896.

Jim Crow Laws

• They ruled that segregation was legal as long as there access for everyone and facilities were equal.

Separate but equal law.

Jim Crow Laws

• Facilities were never equal. Southern governments spent far more money on white only schools and facilities than those for African Americans.

• These laws were enforced well into the 1900s up until the 1960s.

Reconstruction Impact

• The Southern economy did recover thanks to resources such as iron and coal.

Reconstruction Impact

• For a short time African Americans were given equal rights but they were quickly taken away. • Social injustices would last for more than a century.