Tommy's Notes Repository

7 3-7 Effects of Reconstruction

2 min read

Essential Questions:

  • Was Reconstruction a success or a failure for African Americans and their upward mobility after the Civil War?
  • How did Reconstruction impact the lives of African Americans?

Amendments

  • 13th Amendment:
    • Slavery is abolished
  • 14th Amendment:
    • Citizenship is granted to former slaves
  • 15th Amendment
    • The Right to vote
      • Only Black Males were given the right to vote at this time

Political Activism

  • 16 African Americans served in the US Congress
  • More than 600 more were elected to the state legislatures, and hundreds more held local offices across the South.

Political Activism II

  • Hiram Rhodes Revels
    • The First African American elected to the US Senate, 1870 - 1871
  • 1967
    • Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African American senator elected by popular vote.
  • 2013
    • Tim Scott of South Carolina, the first African-American senator to be elected from the southern United States since 1881

Freedman’s Bureau

1865

  • Congress created the Fredmans Bureau to help former slaves get a new start in life. This was the first major relief agency in United States history.
  • The bureau did the following things:
    • Fed millions of people
    • Built hospitals and provided medical aid
    • Negotiated labor contracts for ex-slaves and settled labor disputes.
    • Helped former slaves legalize marriages and locate lost relatives
    • Assisted black veterans.
    • Was instrumental in building thousands of schools for African Americans

Impact of the Freedman’s Bureau

Helped to found colleges such as

  • Howard university in Washington DC
  • Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee
  • Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia.
  • Johnson C smith in Charlotte NC

The end of the Bureau

  • In summer of 1872 congress responding in part to pressure from white Southerners, dismantled the Freedmens Bureau.

The Ku Klux Klan

  • A white supremacist hate group
  • Disrupted Reconstruction as much as they could using terror tactics to threaten and harm others
  • Opressed Republicans, carpetbaggers, scalawags and Freedmen.

The Ku Klux Klan, Continued

  • The Klan intimidated voters using violence
  • They wanted to keep African Americans as submissive laborers and keep them from voting.
  • Assassinated NC senator John Stephens for planning on supporting his black voters.

Jim Crow Laws

  • Laws at the local and state level which segregated whites from blacks and kept African Americans as 2nd class citizens and from voting.
  • There were tactics to keep African American men from being able to vote
    • Poll Taxes
    • Grandfather Clause
      • If your grandfather voted in the 1864 election than you could vote.
    • Literacy Tests