(Professor/Instructor)
However, restoring the South will cost millions of dollars, and the budgets of the state government exploded. Protests against the imposition of new taxes, antagonism on the empowerment of former “black” slaves, and apprehensions of “black power” triggered violent attacks against African-Americans by former Confederate elements.
President Johnson foolishly disrupted the victory of his political enemies with his belligerent stance. This drove the conservative bloc in the Republic Party “into the arms” of the more progressive sector in the party. In the formerly Confederate states, the Republic Party assumed the mantle of control and restructured the state governments. The new electorate featuring the recently “liberated” African Americans was very supportive of the policies being advocated by the new Republican governments (Boyer, Clark, Kett, Salisbury, Sitkoff 497).
However, even though Republican policies found wide acceptance among the newly freed slaves, there were also significant failures during this period. The opposition from the southern “whites” within the party as well as factionalism within its ranks restrained Republican legislators from attaining some of their objectives. The new public educational system was still racially separated; racial segregation and bigotry was still ‘official’ public policy in many Southern states.
In addition, Republican economic growth initiatives in the South did not meet with much success. The Reconstruction era governments were inutile in helping the newly liberated slaves to acquire land for them to farm. This resulted in the former slaves being locked in the mire of marginalization as workers on farms and industrial plantations under ‘white’ ownership. On the local government level, the new African American authorities fought for the right to ensure that “blacks” will be treated equally in the availing of services such as road refurbishing as well as help to the poor.
Nevertheless, though the number of ‘black’ state leaders slightly grew as African Americans slowly gained more experience, these never reached the number that was proportionate to their population. However, African American political leaders made a significant impact on the operation of Reconstruction era administrations. Police chiefs, magistrates, and judges, all of African American descent, guaranteed that the newly freed slaves would be accorded equal treatment in the eyes of the law. The picture of African Americans aiding in governing the states was a resounding sign of the developing changes rising in the South (Stroud 55).
Democrats in the southern United States had bolstered the myth that the left wing governments in the Reconstruction era were symbolic of the demands of inutile and crooked governments. These factors led to the engenderment of weak and broken down regimes. Advocates of civil liberties for African Americans also considered the era as a general failure. To them, the period did not accord any significant gains for African Americans any major opportunity to attain a measure of “racial justice,” either in the area of land reform or via the impartial application of rights.
However, with the passage of several amendments to the Constitution, namely the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and the Fifteenth, the foundations of future work in the context had been laid. There were still instances of rejecting the application and access to avenues for the minorities to exercise their civil rights as well as hindering them to practice their rights to suffrage; however, these were no longer on the level of official state-sanctioned policies and practices, but on the extralegal level.
Here, the US Constitution now mandated for the equal application of the law and impartial application of the right of suffrage for all, regardless of race. It is now clear that the amendments to the Constitution will assure future civil liberty advocates that the American Constitution will be bulwark in their fight against racism and bias.
On one side, the period of rebuilding in the southern United States had attained significant breakthrough by the integration of these idealistic positions on civil rights, shared at the time by a small number of “abolitionists,” “Negro” leaders, and some left wing Republicans, into the very law that guides the crafting of all other laws in the United States. Nevertheless, these lofty objectives would not be fully actualized and practiced until a century later. However, as the objectives had been ingrained into the nation’s fundamental law, the vision persevered in the agenda of the United States (Carlisle 292).
The leaders of the southern state governments during the Reconstruction era were responsible for a great number of progressions. One of their most significant achievements was the development of the initial public school system among the southern states. Prior to the war, opportunities for an education were restricted solely to the children of well-to-do Southern “white” families. However, by the end of the Reconstruction era, more than 50 percent of the “white” children and two-fifths of the African American children in the South were in public schools.
In addition, the “Reconstruction governments” created programs for the impoverished, disabled, mentally unbalanced, and orphans. Several jurisdictions rejected the “Black Codes,” retooled their revenue generation systems, and restructured their penal and judicial systems. To sustain economic growth, Republican legislators supported the construction of railways and other infrastructure programs, such as the refurbishment of dams, bridges, and other systems damaged in the course of the Civil War.
A number of Southern state governments adopted laws prohibiting discrimination in both public transportation and in government edifices and facilities. States such as Louisiana, South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida and others made it unlawful for public and private facilities and state operated transportation facilities such as streetcars, hotels, steamboats, to single out or isolate African Americans. Sadly, these laws, no matter how noble the objective, were not strictly enforced; nevertheless, these laws symbolized the genesis of the recognition of states, in the North or South, of the rights of African Americans to parity in the availing of public services (Stroud 54).
Perhaps one of the most enduring symbols for an autonomous existence for African Americans in that time was the “black churches.” The era was witness to the rise of diverse congregations and denominations established by and serving the needs of the newly freed slaves in the South. The “white” dominated churches saw a mass exodus of “black” attendees that transferred to the “African Methodist Episcopal Church” and other “black” Baptist congregations. The churches, however, epitomized more than just sanctuaries for worship.
The members of the clergy became an integral leadership base for the black community, forming the political principles and ideologies for the attendees. Many of the former slaves were illiterate; the church helped the parishioners in choosing the candidates they should support, the concerns that the congregation should advocate, and, on a personal note, the clergy men helped the parishioners identify their friends and their foes.
Though a number of churches were already operating even before the war, the Reconstruction period gave these institutions the needed environment to mature as the churches acquired more liberty from “white” meddling. Social organizations such as women’s organizations increased to placate the need to socialize, aid for the members, and as bases for community initiatives. “Mutual aid societies” and insurance corporations targeting the African American community were established to aid individuals and families overcome the difficulties of life.
Businesses owned by African Americans slowly mushroomed in the region, particularly those that provided services for the community. These included barbershops, undertakers, hairdressers, and others. Furthermore, more higher education facilities for African Americans were founded during the Reconstruction period. However, the main point of discussion for the newly freed slaves was still in the political arena. This “renaissance” period for African Americans would not be duplicated until the period after the Second World War (Zuczek 21).
The opportunity to attain an education and the right to choose one’s leaders were two of the outstanding achievements achieved by “abolitionists” as well as the liberated African Americans. Both of these factors evidenced a small sliver of progress for the African American sector in particular as well as for American society on the whole. The conflicts and the “battles” regarding these issues with their connotations of “social Darwinism” and the “Protestant work ethic” have significant links to present day debates on affirmative action policies.
One example that can be cited is the position of Berea College founder John G. Fee. Berea allowed “black” students into its rolls in the years before the war. Fee stated that “before public sentiment will cede to you equal positions, you must demonstrate not only equal capacity, but equal merit.” Lawyer and abolitionist Wendell Phillips reiterated this position when he declared to a “black” group in 1873 that the “world worships only one thing-success.”
With “negro” civil right advocates trumpeting the potential of the African American peoples to succeed given the opportunities needed to achieve their goals, “white” lawmakers and other racist elements contested this very potential of the newly liberated slaves. The “whites” posited that the “privileges and immunities of citizenship” can only mean that the person must be white. Though a number of “white” abolitionists rated the advances made by “blacks” by measurements given for “whites,” these also protested to definitions of “progress and advancement” established by opposition elements as being out of reach of the former slaves. Former abolitionism supporters, such as the leading Nation publication, called for a “Southern counterrevolution” to hand back “good government” to purportedly competent former “white” Confederate authorities and remove the same from the “newly liberated” slaves and their “carpetbagger” associates (Rubio 52).
Du Bois poses the question on the character of the period itself. Du Bois queries how much of the era was authentically a “political, social, and racial” upheaval? In addition, was forced servitude and social accountability still on the “collective minds” of Americans? Led by the “revisionists” such as Kenneth Stampp and John Hope Franklin, these sought to erase the “hideous mistake” position of the Reconstruction era.
The “revisionist” bloc was inclined to understand left wingers as a complicated sector that supported civil rights, but did not abuse the South. The “revisionists” sought to reform the “carpetbaggers,” displayed the progress of African-American facilities and institutions such as churches and schools, highlighted the enormous advancement of African American political exercises, and posited that the Reconstruction period was not a complete debacle; in fact, in the position of Du Bois’ work Black Reconstruction (1965, 708), the Reconstruction period was a “splendid failure (Fabre, Fabre, O’Meally 71).
Nevertheless, Du Bois noted that the era of Reconstruction was a tragedy not in its “history, but in its histories.” For Du Bois, as long as white domination is taught in schools, embedded in textbooks, and in contemporary culture, the tenets of racism against African Americans will be firm and secure in its place in the tenets of society (Fabre, Fabre, O’ Meally 66). The end of the Reconstruction era satisfied two burdensome needs for both political parties. For the Republicans, these were unburdened with the disesteemed “southern question.” The Democrats ushered the return of the party to power in the defeated Confederacy, and would remain firmly entrenched in power in the region for another century (Boyer, Clark, Kett, Salisbury, Sitkoff 498).
Works Cited
Boyer, Paul, Clark, Clifford, Kett, Joseph, Salisbury, Neal, and Sitkoff, Harvard. The enduring vision: A history of the American people. Boston: Cengage Learning
Carlisle, Rodney P. Civil War and Reconstruction. New York City: Infobase Learning
Fabre, Fabre, Genevieve, and O’Meally, Robert. History and Memory in African-American Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994 Print
Rubio, Philip F. A history of affirmative action. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi 2009
Stroud, Bettye. The Reconstruction era. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish 2006
Zuczek, Richard. Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era: A-L. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group 2006
