African Americans After
Reconstruction
Frederick Douglass, 1866
• The arm of the Federal
government is long, but it is
far too short to protect the
rights of individuals in the
interior of distant States.
They must have the power
to protect themselves, or
they will go unprotected, in
spite of all the laws the
Federal government can put
upon the national statutebook.
Failure of Reconstruction
• Southern whites were violently opposed to
black rights; many in north were indifferent
• Rise of KKK
• Where army was present, KKK leaders were
apprehended and imprisoned
• Land Reform—blacks (and poor whites) left to
farm tenancy/sharecropping
“Boy, You ain’t a votin’ here”!
Blacks in Southern Politics
 Core voters were black veterans.
 Blacks were politically unprepared.
 Blacks could register and vote in states since 1867.
 The 15th
Amendment
guaranteed
federal voting.
President Grant 1868-1876
Grant Administration Scandals
 Grant presided over an era of
unprecedented
growth and
corruption.
*
Credit Mobilier
Scandal. – jacked up
prices for railroad
construction and cheated
the government out of
money
*
Whiskey Ring.- members
of his administration were
taking kickbacks to keep
certain businesses from
having to pay taxes on
the production and sale of
alcohol
Northern Support Wanes
 “Grantism” & corruption.
 Panic of 1873 [6-year
depression].
 Concern over westward
expansion and Indian wars.
 Key monetary issues:
*
should the government
retire $432m worth of
“greenbacks” issued during the Civil War.
*
should war bonds be paid back in specie or
greenbacks.
The main reason the North was so willing
to compromise was due to the Panic of
1873.
Northerners were more concerned with
providing for families and their own
economy that they were ready to let
the South off.
A Political Crisis: The
“Compromise” of 1877
Compromise of 1877
• In the Compromise of 1877, Hayes promised
that as President, he would remove federal
troops from all southern states. Southern
Democrats would regain complete control of
the region. This ended the Reconstruction era
in the south.
Compromise of 1877
• …allowed Rutherford
B. Hayes to become
president and
removed federal
troops from the South
marking the end of
Reconstruction.
Jim Crow laws
• …were
passed to
enforce
segregation.
Poll tax
• …required
voters to pay a
special tax
before they
could vote.
Since African Americans were poor for the most
part they were not able to pay the tax.
Literacy Tests
In order to vote men had to pass a test
to prove they were intelligent enough
to vote. The purpose was to make sure
white men could vote and black men
could not
Grandfather Clause
Men in the South whose
grandfather had voted prior to the
Civil War were exempt from any of
the new requirements to vote.
Sharecropping
Early Civil Rights Movement: Booker T.
Washington and W.E.B. DuBois
• Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois
were the two most significant early
leaders in the modern Civil Rights
movement.
• This being said, they were very different
men with very different approaches.
• Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee
Institute, believed that Jim Crow was the
reality and that, for the time being,
African Americans should focus on self
improvement through education and
economic strength separate from whites.
• In one of his most famous speeches,
Washington used the metaphor of a
hand, saying that whites and blacks could
be as separate as the fingers but, when
needed, as united as a fist.
19
• DuBois, the first African
American to receive a PhD
from Harvard, believed that
Jim Crow should be opposed
with every means available.
In other words fight for rights
first then worry about
education.
• To this end, he was one of the
founders of the NAACP, which
offered legal challenges to the
Jim Crow system.
• Although seeking the same
ends, Washington and DuBois
shared a rivalry through the
early part of the twentieth
century.
20
Booker T. Washington
• Believed the way to equality was
through vocational education and
economic success.
• He accepted social
separation.
– Believed in industrial education
for blacks and provided it at his
Tuskegee Institute.
– Felt that blacks could achieve
good lives if they were properly
prepared for the industrial jobs
in demand.
– A man “of his times”
Getting educated at Tuskegee Institute
Booker T. Washington’s Approach to
Discrimination
• Find ways to help the newly freed farmers to
be more productive on their farms.
• This way they could get out of poverty.
• He started his Tuskegee Institute for the
purpose of providing vocational education for
African Americans.
• His idea was that once they had training to
make themselves better they could then fight
for social and political rights.
Cont.
• As the northerners opened textile mills in the
South, he tried to convince them to hire these
newly trained people.
• That was one purpose of his “Atlanta
Compromise Speech.”
Atlanta Compromise Speech
• Many thought he sounded like he didn’t mind the
situation as it was but was willing to put up with the
literacy tests, poll taxes, etc. set up by the Jim Crow
laws.
• Basically trading jobs for 2nd class citizen status and
putting up with the Jim Crow Laws.
• Whites accepted his way of going about change.
• At the same time he was pushing for equal rights
without making a show of it.
• Basically start by making yourself better so you can
prove yourself then more people would listen to you.
• Washington was backed by the southern
African Americans he was trying to help but
those in the North didn’t think he was pushing
hard enough.
W.E.B. Du Bois
• Believed that education was meaningless without
equality.
• Supported political equality for African Americans by
helping to form the National Association of
Advancement for Colored People
– Disagreed with Washington’s plan of blacks settling for low
class industrial jobs
– Didn’t think blacks would achieve
their potential or compete with
whites with only factory jobs.
– Was a “man ahead of his times”
– Believed the “talented tenth” should be
educated and pursue civil rights for the
remaining African Americans
Du Bois supported his desire for political equality
for African Americans by helping to form the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP).
Ida B. Wells (Ida Wells-Barnett)
• Led an anti-lynching crusade and called on the
federal government to take action.
– Between 1882 and 1930
almost 5,000 people were
lynched in the U.S.
– Most lynchings were
against blacks in the
south, though some
were white or Asian
– She spoke out and
wrote against this
injustice and later
reformers would use her
writings to help end this
violent act.