Homework Help is Here – Start Your Trial Now!
Social Science
History
In no more than 3-5 sentences, give an overview of the social and political situation that Black Americans faced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Study p. 565-578 in the Give me Liberty! textbook (and “The Meaning of Black Freedom” and “Racial Violence in Reconstruction,” Also look at pp. 764-65 in Give me Liberty! for DuBois’ ideas and at 661-62 for Washington’s. End this paragraph with a thesis statement. In the last sentence or two of this paragraph, you might describe both Dubois and Washington’s programs and summarize your opinion concerning whose solutions were best and why.

In no more than 3-5 sentences, give an overview of the social and political situation that Black Americans faced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Study p. 565-578 in the Give me Liberty! textbook (and “The Meaning of Black Freedom” and “Racial Violence in Reconstruction,” Also look at pp. 764-65 in Give me Liberty! for DuBois’ ideas and at 661-62 for Washington’s. End this paragraph with a thesis statement. In the last sentence or two of this paragraph, you might describe both Dubois and Washington’s programs and summarize your opinion concerning whose solutions were best and why.

icon
Related questions
Question

In no more than 3-5 sentences, give an overview of the social and political situation that Black Americans faced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Study p. 565-578 in the Give me Liberty! textbook (and “The Meaning of Black Freedom” and “Racial Violence in Reconstruction,” Also look at pp. 764-65 in Give me Liberty! for DuBois’ ideas and at 661-62 for Washington’s. End this paragraph with a thesis statement. In the last sentence or two of this paragraph, you might describe both Dubois and Washington’s programs and summarize your opinion concerning whose solutions were best and why. 

 

lumen HIST 1302: US after 1877 Reconstruction Search The Meaning of Black Freedom In addition to political equality, African Americans actively sought out ways to shed the vestiges of slavery. Many discarded the names their former masters had chosen for them and adopted new names like "Freeman" and "Lincoln" that affirmed their new identities as free citizens. Others resettled far from the plantations they had labored on as slaves, hoping to eventually farm their own land or run their own businesses. By the end of Reconstruction, the desire for self-definition, economic independence, and racial pride coalesced in the founding of dozens of black towns across the South. Perhaps the most well-known of these towns was Mound Bayou, Mississippi, a Delta town established in 1887 by Isaiah Montgomery and Ben Green, former slaves of Joseph and Jefferson Davis. Residents of the town took pride in the fact that African Americans owned all of the property in town, including banks, insurance companies, shops, and the surrounding farms, and they celebrated African American cultural and economic achievements during their annual festival, Mound Bayou Days. These tight-knit communities provided African Americans with spaces where they could live free from the indignities seg- regation and the exploitation of sharecropping on white-owned plantations. Land was one of the major desires of the freed people. Frustrated by responsibility for the growing numbers of freed people following his troops, General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 in which land in Georgia and South Carolina was to be set aside as a homestead for the freedpeople. Lacking the authority to confiscate and distribute land-both powers of Congress-the ap- propriation and distribution of land was not fully realized. One of the main purposes of the Freedmen's Bureau, however, was to redis- tribute to former slaves lands that had been abandoned and confiscated by the federal government. But in 1866, land that ex- Confederates had left behind was reinstated to them. Freedpeople's hopes of land reform were unceremoniously dashed as Freedmen Bureau agents held meetings with the freedmen throughout the South telling them the promise of land was not going to be honored and that instead they should plan to go back to work for their former owners, but as wage laborers. The policy reversal came as quite a shock. In one instance, Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner General Oliver O. Howard went to Edisto Island to inform the black population there of the policy change. The black commission's response was that "we were promised Homesteads by the government ... You ask us to forgive the land owners of our island... The man who tied me to a tree and gave me 39 lashes and who stripped and flogged my mother and my sister... that man I cannot well forgive. Does it look as if he has forgiven me, seeing how he tries to keep me in a condition of helplessness?" In working to ensure that crops would be harvested, agents sometimes coerced former slaves into signing contracts with their former masters. However, the Bureau also instituted courts where African Americans could seek redress if their employers were abusing them or not paying them. The last ember of hope for land redistribution was extinguished when Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner's proposed land reform bills were tabled in Congress. Another aspect of the pursuit of freedom was the reconstitution of families. Many freedpeople immediately left plantations in search of family members who had been sold away. Newspaper ads sought information about long lost relatives. People placed these ads until the turn of the 20th century, demonstrating the enduring pursuit of family reunification. When not reconstituted, families were rebuilt as freedpeople sought to gain control over their own children or other children who had been apprenticed to white masters either during the war or as a result of the Black Codes. Above all, freedpeople wanted freedom to control their families. Many freedpeople rushed to solemnize unions with formal wedding ceremonies. Black people's desires to marry fit the government's goal to make free black men responsible for their own households and to prevent black women and children from becoming depen- dent on the government. Freedpeople placed a great emphasis on education for their children and themselves. For many the ability to finally read the Bible for themselves induced work-weary men and women to spend all evening or Sunday attending night school or Sunday school classes. It was not uncommon to find a one-room school with more than 50 students ranging in age from 3 to 80. As Booker T. Washington fa- mously described the situation, "it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn." Many churches served as schoolhouses and as a result became central to the freedom struggle as both the site of liberation and the support for liberation efforts. Free and freed blacks carried well-formed political and organizational skills into freedom. They developed anti-racist politics and organizational skills through anti-slavery organizations turned church associations. Liberated from white- controlled churches, black Americans remade their religious worlds according to their own social and spiritual desires. One of the more marked transformations that took place after emancipation was the proliferation of independent black churches and church associations. In the 1930s, nearly 40% of 663 black churches surveyed had their organizational roots in the post-emancipation era. Many independent black churches emerged in the rural areas and most of them had never been affiliated with white churches. Many of these independent churches were quickly organized into regional, state, and even national associations, often times by brigades of northern and midwestern free blacks who went to the South to help the freedmen. Through associations like the Virginia Baptist State Convention and the Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention, Baptists became the fastest growing post- emancipation denomination, building on their anti-slavery associational roots and carrying on the struggle for black political participa- tion. Tensions between northerners and southerners over styles of worship and educational requirements strained these associations. Southern, rural black churches preferred worship services with more emphasis on inspired preaching, while northern urban blacks fa- vored more orderly worship and an educated ministry. Perhaps the most significant internal transformation in churches had to do with the role of women-a situation that eventually would lead to the development of independent women's conventions in the Baptist Church, Methodist and Pentecostal churches. Women like Nannie Helen Burroughs and Virginia Broughton, leaders of the Baptist Woman's Convention, worked to protect black women from sex- ual violence from white men, a concern that black representatives articulated in state constitutional conventions early in the Reconstruction era. In churches, women continued to have to fight for equal treatment and access to the pulpit as preachers, even though they were able vote in church mee Black churches provided centralized leadership and organization in post-emancipation communities. Many political leaders and office- holders were ministers. Churches were often the largest building in town and served as community centers. Access to pulpits and grow- ing congregations, provided a foundation for ministers' political leadership. Groups like the Union League, militias and fraternal organi- zations all used the regalia, ritual and even hymns of churches to inform and shape their practice. Black churches provided space for conflict over gender roles, cultural values, practices, norms, and political engagement. With the rise of Jim Crow, black churches would enter a new phase of negotiating relationships within the community and the wider world. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS Prevlous Next
Transcribed Image Text:lumen HIST 1302: US after 1877 Reconstruction Search The Meaning of Black Freedom In addition to political equality, African Americans actively sought out ways to shed the vestiges of slavery. Many discarded the names their former masters had chosen for them and adopted new names like "Freeman" and "Lincoln" that affirmed their new identities as free citizens. Others resettled far from the plantations they had labored on as slaves, hoping to eventually farm their own land or run their own businesses. By the end of Reconstruction, the desire for self-definition, economic independence, and racial pride coalesced in the founding of dozens of black towns across the South. Perhaps the most well-known of these towns was Mound Bayou, Mississippi, a Delta town established in 1887 by Isaiah Montgomery and Ben Green, former slaves of Joseph and Jefferson Davis. Residents of the town took pride in the fact that African Americans owned all of the property in town, including banks, insurance companies, shops, and the surrounding farms, and they celebrated African American cultural and economic achievements during their annual festival, Mound Bayou Days. These tight-knit communities provided African Americans with spaces where they could live free from the indignities seg- regation and the exploitation of sharecropping on white-owned plantations. Land was one of the major desires of the freed people. Frustrated by responsibility for the growing numbers of freed people following his troops, General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 in which land in Georgia and South Carolina was to be set aside as a homestead for the freedpeople. Lacking the authority to confiscate and distribute land-both powers of Congress-the ap- propriation and distribution of land was not fully realized. One of the main purposes of the Freedmen's Bureau, however, was to redis- tribute to former slaves lands that had been abandoned and confiscated by the federal government. But in 1866, land that ex- Confederates had left behind was reinstated to them. Freedpeople's hopes of land reform were unceremoniously dashed as Freedmen Bureau agents held meetings with the freedmen throughout the South telling them the promise of land was not going to be honored and that instead they should plan to go back to work for their former owners, but as wage laborers. The policy reversal came as quite a shock. In one instance, Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner General Oliver O. Howard went to Edisto Island to inform the black population there of the policy change. The black commission's response was that "we were promised Homesteads by the government ... You ask us to forgive the land owners of our island... The man who tied me to a tree and gave me 39 lashes and who stripped and flogged my mother and my sister... that man I cannot well forgive. Does it look as if he has forgiven me, seeing how he tries to keep me in a condition of helplessness?" In working to ensure that crops would be harvested, agents sometimes coerced former slaves into signing contracts with their former masters. However, the Bureau also instituted courts where African Americans could seek redress if their employers were abusing them or not paying them. The last ember of hope for land redistribution was extinguished when Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner's proposed land reform bills were tabled in Congress. Another aspect of the pursuit of freedom was the reconstitution of families. Many freedpeople immediately left plantations in search of family members who had been sold away. Newspaper ads sought information about long lost relatives. People placed these ads until the turn of the 20th century, demonstrating the enduring pursuit of family reunification. When not reconstituted, families were rebuilt as freedpeople sought to gain control over their own children or other children who had been apprenticed to white masters either during the war or as a result of the Black Codes. Above all, freedpeople wanted freedom to control their families. Many freedpeople rushed to solemnize unions with formal wedding ceremonies. Black people's desires to marry fit the government's goal to make free black men responsible for their own households and to prevent black women and children from becoming depen- dent on the government. Freedpeople placed a great emphasis on education for their children and themselves. For many the ability to finally read the Bible for themselves induced work-weary men and women to spend all evening or Sunday attending night school or Sunday school classes. It was not uncommon to find a one-room school with more than 50 students ranging in age from 3 to 80. As Booker T. Washington fa- mously described the situation, "it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn." Many churches served as schoolhouses and as a result became central to the freedom struggle as both the site of liberation and the support for liberation efforts. Free and freed blacks carried well-formed political and organizational skills into freedom. They developed anti-racist politics and organizational skills through anti-slavery organizations turned church associations. Liberated from white- controlled churches, black Americans remade their religious worlds according to their own social and spiritual desires. One of the more marked transformations that took place after emancipation was the proliferation of independent black churches and church associations. In the 1930s, nearly 40% of 663 black churches surveyed had their organizational roots in the post-emancipation era. Many independent black churches emerged in the rural areas and most of them had never been affiliated with white churches. Many of these independent churches were quickly organized into regional, state, and even national associations, often times by brigades of northern and midwestern free blacks who went to the South to help the freedmen. Through associations like the Virginia Baptist State Convention and the Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention, Baptists became the fastest growing post- emancipation denomination, building on their anti-slavery associational roots and carrying on the struggle for black political participa- tion. Tensions between northerners and southerners over styles of worship and educational requirements strained these associations. Southern, rural black churches preferred worship services with more emphasis on inspired preaching, while northern urban blacks fa- vored more orderly worship and an educated ministry. Perhaps the most significant internal transformation in churches had to do with the role of women-a situation that eventually would lead to the development of independent women's conventions in the Baptist Church, Methodist and Pentecostal churches. Women like Nannie Helen Burroughs and Virginia Broughton, leaders of the Baptist Woman's Convention, worked to protect black women from sex- ual violence from white men, a concern that black representatives articulated in state constitutional conventions early in the Reconstruction era. In churches, women continued to have to fight for equal treatment and access to the pulpit as preachers, even though they were able vote in church mee Black churches provided centralized leadership and organization in post-emancipation communities. Many political leaders and office- holders were ministers. Churches were often the largest building in town and served as community centers. Access to pulpits and grow- ing congregations, provided a foundation for ministers' political leadership. Groups like the Union League, militias and fraternal organi- zations all used the regalia, ritual and even hymns of churches to inform and shape their practice. Black churches provided space for conflict over gender roles, cultural values, practices, norms, and political engagement. With the rise of Jim Crow, black churches would enter a new phase of negotiating relationships within the community and the wider world. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS Prevlous Next
lumen HIST 1302: US after 1877 Reconstruction Search Racial Violence in Reconstruction Violence shattered the dream of biracial democracy. Still steeped in the violence of slavery, white southerners could scarcely imagine black free labor. Congressional investigator, Carl Schurz, reported that in the summer of 1865, southerners shared a near unanimous sentiment that "You cannot make the negro work, without physical compulsion." Violence had been used in the antebellum period to enforce slave labor and define racial difference. In the post-emancipation period it was used to stifle black advancement and return to the old order. Much of life in the antebellum South had been premised on slavery; the social order rested upon a subjugated underclass and the labor system required unfree laborers. A notion of white supremacy and black inferiority undergirded it all: whites were understood as fit for freedom and citizenship; blacks for chattel slave labor. The Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House and the subsequent adoption by the U.S. Congress of the Thirteenth Amendment destroyed the institution of American slavery and threw the southern soci- ety into disarray. The foundation of southern society had been decimated. While southern legislators tried to use black codes to restore the old order, while white citizens turned to terrorism to try to control the former slaves. HELLEW The Ku Klux Klan was Just one of a number of viglante groups that arose after the war to terrorize African Americans and Republicans throughout the South. The KKK brought vlolence Into the voting polls, the workplace, and – as seen In this Harper's Weekly print – the homes of black Americans. Frank Bellew, "Visit of the Ku- Klux," 1872. WIkimedla. Racial violence in the Reconstruction period took three major forms: urban riots, interpersonal fights, and organized vigilante groups. There were riots in southern cities several times during Reconstruction. The most notable were the riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866, but other large-scale urban conflicts erupted in places including Laurens, South Carolina in 1870; Colfax, Louisiana in 1873; an- other in New Orleans in 1874; Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1875; and Hamburg, South Carolina in 1876. Southern cities grew rapidly after the war as migrants from the countryside-particularly freed slaves-flocked to urban centers. Cities became centers of Republican con- trol. But white conservatives chafed at the influx of black residents and the establishment of biracial politics. In nearly every conflict, white conservatives initiated violence in reaction to Republican rallies or conventions or elections in which black men were to vote. The death tolls of these conflicts remain incalculable-and victims were overwhelmingly black. Even everyday violence between individuals disproportionally targeted African Americans during Reconstruction. Though African Americans gained citizenship rights like the ability to serve on juries as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal constitution, southern white men were rarely successfully prosecuted for violence against black victims. White beat or shot black men with relative impunity, and did so over minor squabbles, labor dis ongstanding grudges, and crimes of passion. These incidents sometimes were reported to local federal authorities like the army or the Freedmen's Bureau, but more often than not such violence was underreported and unprosecuted. More premeditated was the violence committed by organized vigilante groups, sometimes called nightriders or bushwhackers. Groups of nightriders-called so because they often operated at night, under cover of darkness and wearing disguises-sought to curtail African American political involvement by harassing and killing black candidates and office holders and frightening voters away from the polls. They also aimed to limit black economic mobility by terrorizing freedpeople who tried to purchase land or otherwise become too independent from the white masters they used to rely on. They were terrorists and vigilantes, determined to stop the erosion of the antebellum South, and they were widespread and numerous, operating throughout the South. The Ku Klux Klan emerged in the late 1860s as the most infamous of these groups. The Ku Klux Klan was organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee and had spread to nearly every state of the former Confederacy by 1868. The Klan drew heavily from the antebellum southern elite, but Klan groups sometimes overlapped with criminal gangs or former Confederate guerilla groups. The Klan's imagery of white hoods and robes became so potent, and its violence so widespread, that many groups not formally associated with it were called Ku Kluxers, and to “Ku Klux" was used to mean to commit vigilante violence. While it is difficult to differentiate Klan actions from those of similar groups, such as the White Line, Knights of the White Camellia, and the White Brotherhood, the distinctions hardly matter. All such groups were part of a web of terror that spread throughout the South during Reconstruction. In Panola County, Mississippi, between August 1870 and December 1872, twenty-four Klan-style murders oc- curred. And nearby, in Lafayette County, Klansmen drowned thirty blacks in a single mass murder. Sometimes the violence was aimed at "uppity" blacks who had tried to buy land or dared to be insolent toward a white. Other times, as with the beating of Republican sheriff and tax collector Allen Huggins, the Klan targeted white politicians who supported freedpeople's civil rights. Numerous, perhaps dozens, of Republican politicians were killed, either while in office or while campaigning. Thousands of individual citizens, men and women, white and black, had their homes raided and were whipped, raped, or murdered. The federal government responded to southern paramilitary tactics by passing the Enforcement Acts between 1870 and 1871. The acts made it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights. The acts also deemed violent Klan behavior as acts of rebellion against the United States and allowed for the use of U.S. troops to protect freedpeople. For a time, the federal government, its courts, and its troops, sought to put an end to the KKK and related groups. But the violence continued. By 1876, as southern Democrats reestablished "home rule" and "redeemed" the South from Republican rule, federal opposition to the KKK weakened. National attention shifted away from the South and the activities of the Klan, but African Americans remained trapped in a world of white supremacy that restricted their economic, social, and political rights. THE FREEDMENS BUREAU.-Duwx T A. R. Waun.-(See PAOE T.) The national government, Initlated by President Lincoln, created the Freedmen's Bureau to assist freed people In securing their rights and their Iivelihoods. In this Harper's Weekly print, The Freedmen's Bureau officlal protecting the black men and women from the angry and rlotous mob of white Americans stood as a representation of the entire Bureau. Soon the Bureau and the federal government would recognize that they could not accomplish a fraction of what they set out to do, Including keeping African Americans safe and free In the South. Alfred R. Waud, "The Freedmen's Bureau," 1868. LIbrary of Congress. White conservatives would assert that Republicans, in denouncing violence, were "waving a bloody shirt" for political opportunity. The violence, according to many white conservatives, was fabricated, or not as bad as it was claimed, or an unavoidable consequence of the enfranchisement of African Americans. On December 22, 1871, R. Latham of Yorkville, South Carolina wrote to the New York Tribune, voicing the beliefs of many white southerners as he declared that "the same principle that prompted the white men at Boston, disguised as Indians, to board, during the darkness of night, a vessel with tea, and throw her cargo into the Bay, clothed some of our people in Ku Klux gowns, and sent them out on missions technically illegal. Did the Ku Klux do wrong? You are ready to say they did and we will not argue the point with you... Under the peculiar circumstances what could the people of South Carolina do but resort to Ku Kluxing?" Victims and witnesses to the violence told a different story. Sallie Adkins of Warren County, Georgia, was traveling with her husband, Joseph, a Georgia state senator, when he was assassinated by Klansmen on May 10, 1869. She wrote President Ulysses S. Grant, asking for both physical protection and justice. "I am no Statesman," she disclaimed, "I am only a poor woman whose husband has been mur- dered for his devotion to his country. I may have very foolish ideas of Government, States & Constitutions. But I feel that I have claims upon my country. The Rebels imprisoned my Husband. Pardoned Rebels murdered him. There is no law for the punishment of them who do deeds of this sort... I demand that you, President Grant, keep the pledge you made the nation-make it safe for any man to utter boldly and openly his devotion to the United States." Thousands of Americans murdered and thousands more were raped, whipped, and wounded during the violence of Reconstruction. The political and social consequences of the violence were as lasting as the physical and mental trauma suffered by victims and wit- nesses. Terrorism worked to end federal involvement in Reconstruction and helped to usher in a new era of racial repression. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS Prevlous Next HARPER'S WEEKLY. JULY 25, 1868.)
Transcribed Image Text:lumen HIST 1302: US after 1877 Reconstruction Search Racial Violence in Reconstruction Violence shattered the dream of biracial democracy. Still steeped in the violence of slavery, white southerners could scarcely imagine black free labor. Congressional investigator, Carl Schurz, reported that in the summer of 1865, southerners shared a near unanimous sentiment that "You cannot make the negro work, without physical compulsion." Violence had been used in the antebellum period to enforce slave labor and define racial difference. In the post-emancipation period it was used to stifle black advancement and return to the old order. Much of life in the antebellum South had been premised on slavery; the social order rested upon a subjugated underclass and the labor system required unfree laborers. A notion of white supremacy and black inferiority undergirded it all: whites were understood as fit for freedom and citizenship; blacks for chattel slave labor. The Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House and the subsequent adoption by the U.S. Congress of the Thirteenth Amendment destroyed the institution of American slavery and threw the southern soci- ety into disarray. The foundation of southern society had been decimated. While southern legislators tried to use black codes to restore the old order, while white citizens turned to terrorism to try to control the former slaves. HELLEW The Ku Klux Klan was Just one of a number of viglante groups that arose after the war to terrorize African Americans and Republicans throughout the South. The KKK brought vlolence Into the voting polls, the workplace, and – as seen In this Harper's Weekly print – the homes of black Americans. Frank Bellew, "Visit of the Ku- Klux," 1872. WIkimedla. Racial violence in the Reconstruction period took three major forms: urban riots, interpersonal fights, and organized vigilante groups. There were riots in southern cities several times during Reconstruction. The most notable were the riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866, but other large-scale urban conflicts erupted in places including Laurens, South Carolina in 1870; Colfax, Louisiana in 1873; an- other in New Orleans in 1874; Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1875; and Hamburg, South Carolina in 1876. Southern cities grew rapidly after the war as migrants from the countryside-particularly freed slaves-flocked to urban centers. Cities became centers of Republican con- trol. But white conservatives chafed at the influx of black residents and the establishment of biracial politics. In nearly every conflict, white conservatives initiated violence in reaction to Republican rallies or conventions or elections in which black men were to vote. The death tolls of these conflicts remain incalculable-and victims were overwhelmingly black. Even everyday violence between individuals disproportionally targeted African Americans during Reconstruction. Though African Americans gained citizenship rights like the ability to serve on juries as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal constitution, southern white men were rarely successfully prosecuted for violence against black victims. White beat or shot black men with relative impunity, and did so over minor squabbles, labor dis ongstanding grudges, and crimes of passion. These incidents sometimes were reported to local federal authorities like the army or the Freedmen's Bureau, but more often than not such violence was underreported and unprosecuted. More premeditated was the violence committed by organized vigilante groups, sometimes called nightriders or bushwhackers. Groups of nightriders-called so because they often operated at night, under cover of darkness and wearing disguises-sought to curtail African American political involvement by harassing and killing black candidates and office holders and frightening voters away from the polls. They also aimed to limit black economic mobility by terrorizing freedpeople who tried to purchase land or otherwise become too independent from the white masters they used to rely on. They were terrorists and vigilantes, determined to stop the erosion of the antebellum South, and they were widespread and numerous, operating throughout the South. The Ku Klux Klan emerged in the late 1860s as the most infamous of these groups. The Ku Klux Klan was organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee and had spread to nearly every state of the former Confederacy by 1868. The Klan drew heavily from the antebellum southern elite, but Klan groups sometimes overlapped with criminal gangs or former Confederate guerilla groups. The Klan's imagery of white hoods and robes became so potent, and its violence so widespread, that many groups not formally associated with it were called Ku Kluxers, and to “Ku Klux" was used to mean to commit vigilante violence. While it is difficult to differentiate Klan actions from those of similar groups, such as the White Line, Knights of the White Camellia, and the White Brotherhood, the distinctions hardly matter. All such groups were part of a web of terror that spread throughout the South during Reconstruction. In Panola County, Mississippi, between August 1870 and December 1872, twenty-four Klan-style murders oc- curred. And nearby, in Lafayette County, Klansmen drowned thirty blacks in a single mass murder. Sometimes the violence was aimed at "uppity" blacks who had tried to buy land or dared to be insolent toward a white. Other times, as with the beating of Republican sheriff and tax collector Allen Huggins, the Klan targeted white politicians who supported freedpeople's civil rights. Numerous, perhaps dozens, of Republican politicians were killed, either while in office or while campaigning. Thousands of individual citizens, men and women, white and black, had their homes raided and were whipped, raped, or murdered. The federal government responded to southern paramilitary tactics by passing the Enforcement Acts between 1870 and 1871. The acts made it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights. The acts also deemed violent Klan behavior as acts of rebellion against the United States and allowed for the use of U.S. troops to protect freedpeople. For a time, the federal government, its courts, and its troops, sought to put an end to the KKK and related groups. But the violence continued. By 1876, as southern Democrats reestablished "home rule" and "redeemed" the South from Republican rule, federal opposition to the KKK weakened. National attention shifted away from the South and the activities of the Klan, but African Americans remained trapped in a world of white supremacy that restricted their economic, social, and political rights. THE FREEDMENS BUREAU.-Duwx T A. R. Waun.-(See PAOE T.) The national government, Initlated by President Lincoln, created the Freedmen's Bureau to assist freed people In securing their rights and their Iivelihoods. In this Harper's Weekly print, The Freedmen's Bureau officlal protecting the black men and women from the angry and rlotous mob of white Americans stood as a representation of the entire Bureau. Soon the Bureau and the federal government would recognize that they could not accomplish a fraction of what they set out to do, Including keeping African Americans safe and free In the South. Alfred R. Waud, "The Freedmen's Bureau," 1868. LIbrary of Congress. White conservatives would assert that Republicans, in denouncing violence, were "waving a bloody shirt" for political opportunity. The violence, according to many white conservatives, was fabricated, or not as bad as it was claimed, or an unavoidable consequence of the enfranchisement of African Americans. On December 22, 1871, R. Latham of Yorkville, South Carolina wrote to the New York Tribune, voicing the beliefs of many white southerners as he declared that "the same principle that prompted the white men at Boston, disguised as Indians, to board, during the darkness of night, a vessel with tea, and throw her cargo into the Bay, clothed some of our people in Ku Klux gowns, and sent them out on missions technically illegal. Did the Ku Klux do wrong? You are ready to say they did and we will not argue the point with you... Under the peculiar circumstances what could the people of South Carolina do but resort to Ku Kluxing?" Victims and witnesses to the violence told a different story. Sallie Adkins of Warren County, Georgia, was traveling with her husband, Joseph, a Georgia state senator, when he was assassinated by Klansmen on May 10, 1869. She wrote President Ulysses S. Grant, asking for both physical protection and justice. "I am no Statesman," she disclaimed, "I am only a poor woman whose husband has been mur- dered for his devotion to his country. I may have very foolish ideas of Government, States & Constitutions. But I feel that I have claims upon my country. The Rebels imprisoned my Husband. Pardoned Rebels murdered him. There is no law for the punishment of them who do deeds of this sort... I demand that you, President Grant, keep the pledge you made the nation-make it safe for any man to utter boldly and openly his devotion to the United States." Thousands of Americans murdered and thousands more were raped, whipped, and wounded during the violence of Reconstruction. The political and social consequences of the violence were as lasting as the physical and mental trauma suffered by victims and wit- nesses. Terrorism worked to end federal involvement in Reconstruction and helped to usher in a new era of racial repression. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS Prevlous Next HARPER'S WEEKLY. JULY 25, 1868.)
Expert Solution
trending now

Trending now

This is a popular solution!

steps

Step by step

Solved in 2 steps

SEE SOLUTIONCheck out a sample Q&A here
Blurred answer