Southern Resistance to
Reconstruction
•How could Southern state governments
deny African-Americans their rights of
voting and equality?
Denying African American Voting
Rights
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Literacy Tests
– You had to know how to read in order to vote
– Is this a good idea?
– Overturned by Voting Rights Act 1965
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Poll Taxes
– You had to pay to vote
– Is this fair?
– Overturned 24th amendment 1964
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Grandfather Clauses
– Various ways to exclude poor whites from literacy test/poll taxes, etc.
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If your grandfather was eligible to vote
If your grandfather fought in a war
If you were eligible to vote in 1867
Overturned by Guinn vs. United States (1915)
Jim Crow Laws
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Segregation of the races in public places
How was this allowed to exist as laws?
Upheld by Plessy vs. Ferguson
Overturned by lots of cases, laws during Civil Rights movement, Brown vs.
Board of Ed was main thrust
Plessy vs. Ferguson-1896
• Background of case
– La. Law-separate RR cars for races
– Plessy bought a ticket to sit in the white
section!!!!
– Plessy hired to fight the ruling b/c he was an
“octoroon” (1/8th black),
• then announce on the train that he was black
• Also to show the vagaries of definitions of
race!!
• he was arrested, appeal went to Supreme
Court
Plessy Decision
• Plessy loses
• “SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”
• Made segregation legal in the South for
over ½ century
• Finally overturned in Brown vs. Board of
Ed. (1954)
KKK
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Formed as a social club of Confederate Veterans-Tennessee 1866
Nathan Bedford Forest
Why do they wear the outfit?
– Disguise/anonymity
– Confederate soldier ghosts
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Methods
– Intimidation/violence/burnings/lynching's
– Polling places
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Who would they target the most and why?
Targeted freedmen (usually landowners more than sharecroppers)/
Republican Party
Why was it successful?
– Most southern leaders were either in the Klan or sympathetic towards its
– Prosecution?? What jury is going to stand up to KKK (think mob trials)
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KKK acts gave federal enforcement and pretty much ended the KKK
– KKK actually reached its height in 1920’s
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5 million members
By then they were anti-everything
Pres. Harding thought to be inducted into KKK in White House
Governor of Indiana
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black
Sen. Byrd from W. Va today (ironically, he was the Senate Minority Leader)
“Southern Redemption”
• Return of Democratic Party to power
• Aided by wimpy/indifferent North
• Lack of federal power because of federal
scandals under Grant
• Amnesty Act 1872- allowed former
Confederate leaders to rejoin federal
government
• 1872- Freedmen’s Bureau disbanded
Election of 1876
• Rutherford B. Hayes-Republican (“The
Great Unknown”)
– “Some men are born great, some
achieve greatness, and some are born
in Ohio!!”
• Samuel Tilden- Democrat- Governor of NY
Results?
• Tilden wins popular vote
• Seemed to have electoral college count also, but
Republicans charged that there were 3 Southern states
where election results were fraud
– Are the Republican claims realistic?
• Democrats charged that Republicans using their power to
fix the election
• Special commission set up to count the vote in the 3
disputed states (La. Fla. S. Car.)
• 8 Republicans/7 Dems on the commission
• Who wins the election???????
“President Compromise”
• Compromise of 1877
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Hayes becomes President
Troops removed from the South
Hayes appoints a Southerner to cabinet
Congress agrees to give $$ to rebuild South and pay
for Southern Transcontinental Railroad
• Who gets the better deal, North or South???
• Reconstruction over!!