From Reconstruction to Plessy v. Ferguson
First state legislatures with black representatives convene
1867
A Timeline of Early Jim Crow in the Southern United States
Fourteenth Amendment is ratified
1868
Fifteenth Amendment is ratified
1870
President Grant signs the Ku Klux Klan Act
1871
The Colfax Massacre: The White League kills 100 black members of Louisiana state militia
1873
The First Mississippi Plan e!ects a 60,000 vote reversal in one year
1875
Civil Rights Bill passed as last act of Republican Congress
1875
The Compromise of 1877 brings Reconstruction to a close
1877
Supreme Court rules Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional
1883
Louisiana law requires separate train facilities
1890
Mississippi Constitutional Convention disenfranchises blacks
1890
Homer Plessy, an octoroon, arrested for sitting in white train car
1892
Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" speech
1895
Emancipation Proclamation
1863
1865
1870
Plessy v. Ferguson makes "separate but equal" the law of the land
1896
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
Reconstruction Amendments
Amendment XIII (1865)
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Amendment XIV (1868)
Section 1.
[Summary] All persons born or naturalized in the United States, i.e., former black slaves, are citizens of the United
States and of the state in which they reside. No state can abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States. All citizens shall receive due process.
Section 2.
[Abridged] Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers,
counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.
Section 3.
[Summary] Those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S.—i.e., those who fought in for the South
in the Civil War—may not hold elected office.
Section 4.
[Summary]. The U.S. government is not liable for war debts of the South or for claims of loss related to freed slaves.
Amendment XV (1870)
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.