Struggle For Racial Equality

The Struggle for Racial Equality
, Associate Professor, UTP / Licenciatura en Inglés / 2011

“Reconstruction” is the name given to the era just after the Civil War and to the U.S. government’s policies aimed at reintegrating into the Union the former confederate states. Aside from the physical challenge of reconstructing the South’s cities, railroads and economy, reconstruction had also todeal with problems such as how to deal with those who had taken up arms against the United States and how to deal with the newly freed slaves.

In stark contrast to most civil wars and rebellions that have occurred in diverse parts of the world in many periods of history, the Civil War was not marked by bloody reprisals against the defeated. At Appomattox, Grant accepted Lee’s surrender withgenerous promises of amnesty for Confederate soldiers. Except for the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who was briefly imprisoned following the war, all southern soldiers and their officers were pardoned by order of President Lincoln and encouraged to return peaceably to their farms and businesses. Still, the reconstruction period is one that southerners have remembered with pain and bitterness.Many farms and homes lay in ruins. Men who had once owned rich plantations with many slaves found themselves in poverty. Former officers of the Confederate were deprived of their political rights whereas newly freed slaves could now vote and even hold political offices. For many years Southern towns were patrolled by federal troops, sometimes including black soldiers. A considerable number ofnortherners arrived in the South to educate the freed slaves and to help them claim their new rights as citizens. Other northerners came to buy farms and businesses that financially ruined Southern families were forced to sell. Southerners resented these opportunists from the north and referred to them as “carpetbaggers (from the cloth bags in which travelers sometimes carried their belongings –emphasizing the idea that these people were outsiders and opportunists). Southerners also vented their anger against “scalawags” (southerners who cooperated with Federal reconstruction policies).

An immediate result of the Civil War was to complicate the relations between white and African Americans. White Southerners were angry and humiliated to see Negroes, who had only recently been slaves,holding positions of authority. The Republican Party- the party of Lincoln – reminded blacks of its benefits to them and made a great effort to enlist blacks and even promote them for political offices. This had the effect of antagonizing white Southerners, most of whom belonged to the Democratic Party. The idea of being governed by blacks was unbearable to many southern whites, and exaggerated storieswere told of irresponsible, drunken Negroes sitting in the halls of state legislatures and misappropriating public money. Southerners blamed all of these real and imagined injustices to reconstruction. Clandestine groups arose whose purpose it was to resist Federal control and reassert white social superiority. The most famous of these was the Ku Klux Klan, founded by former Confederate GeneralNathan Bedford Forrest. As prejudice against Negroes became more and more commonplace, Southern states began to pass repressive laws aimed at marginalizing African-Americans from white society. These laws are often referred to as the “Black Codes”, while the institution of racial segregation and repression is known as “Jim Crow” (named after a popular music and dance routine associated withNegroes). The idea behind the Black Codes or Jim Crow laws was to ensure that black people did not exercise political rights or mix with white society on terms of equality.

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, passed at the conclusion of the Civil War, feed all Negroes from slavery, made them full U.S. citizens, and guaranteed their civil rights and equality before the law....