Disastrous Effects Of Reconstruction

The Reconstruction failed badly for many different reasons. Racism is one of the major key roles that caused the reconstruction to fail. No one could seem to see that blacks where equal since they believed that the blacks where less than them. Slavery also played a key role into the failure of reconstruction. Before the war slaves where considered three fifths of one.

Segregation in the American South has not always been as easy as determining black and white. In C. Vann Woodward’s book, “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” post-civil war in Southern America has truly brought the “Jim Crow” laws into light and the ultimate formation of segregation in the south. The book determines that there is no solid segregation in the south for years rather than several decades following the end of the American Civil War in 1865 where the South achieved a better stand on segregation and equality as compared to the North at this time. Racial segregation in the form of Jim Crow laws that divided the White Americans from the African Americans in almost every sense of daily life did not appear with the end of slavery but towards

Prior to the establishment of this act, African Americans faced many legal restraints prohibiting many of them from voting- a right guaranteed to all citizens under the fifteenth amendment. When African Americans attended the polling booths, they were often asked to complete a literacy test or pay a poll fine to vote. These tests caused a vast demographic of African Americans to be exempt from the voting process, excluding and discrediting their voices. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally outlawed any discriminatory voting prerequisites used by many Southern states at the time. The development of this act is often seen as a crucial turning point for the Civil Rights Movement and one of the nation’s most significant accomplishments since Reconstruction.

i personally do not believe reconstruction would have succeeded even if president lincoln had not been assassinated. i dont think reconstruction would have necesarrily completely failed either, more so his death or survival would not have changed the end result. the reconstruction period was ultimately so long, we can now look back and see it would have required too much from one president to resolve all impending matters. Lincoln's ten percent plan was supported by Republicans, mostly because it was seen as a quick end to the war, not exactly a perfect plan for reconstruction. President Lincoln did not have a set blueprint for reconstruction.

During this time period, Northern States and Southern States followed different laws in terms of African Americans. According to the reading, “large majority of African Americans living in the south lacked the civil and political rights of citizens.” Despite living in a partially liberal society, African Americans faced adversity in the Southern States. Blacks lacked recognition as citizens due to the idea of inferiority that Whites

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation that was enacted to protect the voting rights of African Americans and other minority groups. The law was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965, and has been credited with increasing the political power and representation of minority groups in the United States. This essay will explore the background, significance, and impact of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the current challenges and controversies surrounding the law. Prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, voting rights were often denied to African Americans and other minority groups through a variety of discriminatory practices, including literacy tests, poll taxes, and other measures.

In 1870, The Fifteenth Amendment was published and stated that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and that, “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation” (Doc 1). During the 1950’s black Americans decided to act upon their frustration that whites were

A major part of the Reconstruction Era was The roaring 20’s, a time period of economic success and prosperity for many. It’s a time period where numerous people wish they were alive to experience, but those people were not people of color. Sadly, the roaring 20’s was not all that roaring for African Americans who were just recently emancipated. After liberation, a vast wave of African Americans moved to the North to pursue a life more successful than they’d have in the South. Little did they know, segregation and race relations has spread throughout the country and some people still didn’t treat them as equals.

Fortunately for some period of time the success of the reconstruction outweigh the negative, these negatives quickly escalated during this important milestone for the country. The process of the reconstruction quickly went downhill, after the positives transformed into negatives, the negatives did not end there and the list continued to grow. The addition of “black codes” began to destroy the newly established freedom of the former slaves. White supremacist congressmen passed the laws known as black codes to forbid “blacks the right to make contracts, testify against whites, marry white women, be unemployed, and loiter in public places”.

Even after the 19th Amendment was passed, granting women the right to vote, African Americans were still left out of participation. Although they technically could, the system prevented them most of the time as “only 5 percent of blacks were registered to vote. ”1 This was due to unfair literacy tests and fees creating obstacles in the voting process. Moreover, the oppression continued as “many of the state's [Mississippi] leading politicians were Klan members. ”1

In the battle to decide the constitutionality of segregation, the Supreme Court famously ruled “separate but equal” was indeed legal (Hayes 1/31/18). This ruling allowed for further discrimination and racism to grow as a result: “It cemented the imposition of…segregation of public facilities, and political disfranchisement that was enforced with terror and violence” (Rosenzweig 145). This segregation spread all over the south and was only made illegal until half a century later. However this was not the worst thing that befell on African Americans during this horrible

But, when these officials were elected to Congress, they passed the “black codes” and thus the relations between the president and legislators became worst (Schriefer, Sivell and Arch R1). These so called “Black Codes” were “a series of laws to deprive blacks of their constitutional rights” that they were enacted mainly by Deep South legislatures. Black Codes differ from a state to another but they were stricter in the Deep South as they were sometimes irrationally austere. (Hazen 30) Furthermore, with the emergence of organizations such as the Red Shirts and the White League with the rise of the Conservative White Democrats’ power, efforts to prevent Black Americans from voting were escalating (Watts 247), even if the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S constitution that gave the Blacks the right to vote had been ratified in 1870.

A prominent issue that occurred in the Southern United States was segregation between African Americans and other Americans (predominantly White Americans). Segregation was implanted in all aspects of American society that eventually became “an accepted part of southern society” (Greene 2010). The government’s perspective on civil rights was stagnant and not striving toward

America’s history has been marked by periods of tumult and periods of stability within its borders, C. Vann Woodward’s book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, chronicles the events that happen after the Reconstruction period, showcasing the problems that Americans went through. The Strange Career of Jim Crow attacks segregation starting with its foundations and then records the laws and codes that the African-American population lived under during that time period. In his book Woodward points out the origins of Jim Crow laws and the segregation that goes with it, stating “One of the strangest things about the career of Jim Crow was that the system was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force. ”1 This book review

Not only did African-Americans endure Jim Crow south, but they also faced state supported segregation. “Legal segregation was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The court reasoned that mandating separate facilities for the races, as long as they were equal, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.” However, facilities in the Jim Crow South were hardly equal.