Chapter 6: Blacks in the Reconstruction Era

colleges

Some black churches founded these in the south during Reconstruction to provide African Americans with greater access to higher education. Examples include Morehouse, Howard, Hampton Institute in Virginia, and Fisk.

sharecropping

Because few African Americans in the south could afford to buy or even rent land, many participated in this new agricultural labor system where the landowner provided a worker with land, seed, tools, a mule, and a cabin. The worker then farmed the land in exchange for a share, or a part, fo the crop. This benefited the landowners because they no longer had to pay their workers, and the sharecropped benefited by having a specific plot of land to farm, but they were often forced to grow cotton and were trapped in a cycle of debt and poverty.

Hiram Revels

He became the nation's first black senator in 1870, elected from Mississippi. He fought against racial segregation while in office and earned respect for his skill as a speaker.

Blanche K. Bruce

He was the first African American to serve a full six-year term in the Senate. He served from 1875-1881, and took strong stands attacking election fraud and corruption. He championed increased civil rights for African Americans as well as for Chinese immigrants and Native Americans. He also worked to increase education funding and to improve commerce along the Mississippi River. He briefly presided over the US Senate in 1879, the first African Aemrican to do so.

P. B. S. Pinchback

Served as a lieutenant governor in Louisiana and then became the first black governor in the US when he held the office for more than a month when the elected governor was impeached.

Samuel J. Lee and Robert B. Elliott

Served as the Speakers of the House in South Carolina during the Reconstruction era.

Black Codes

Southern state legislatures passed these laws that were discriminatory against African Americans, and resembled the slave codes that had controlled African Americans under slavery and put them back into an inferior and slavelike condition, as well as ensure that white planters had a dependent black labor force.

Joseph Rainey

The first black congressman to serve in the US House of Representatives. He was one of 20 African Americans to serve in the House of Representatives from 1870-1901. He was born into slavery and had escaped during the Civil War. He focused on improving civil rights for African Americans.

Reconstruction

The process of reuniting the United States after the Civil War and rebuilding the defeated South. It lasted from 1865-1877.

Thirteenth Amendment

This amendment to the Constitution made slavery illegal throughout the entire United States. It took effect on December 18, 1865.

Fourteenth Amendment

This amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted US citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, overturning the Dred Scott decision of 1857 in which the US Supreme Court had ruled that African Americans were not US citizens. This amendment also guaranteed all US citizens equal protection under the law and prohibited any state from depriving a citizen's rights without due process of law.

Fifteenth Amendment

This amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870, stated that no US citizen could be denied the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

"forty acres and a mule"

This was what Union general William T. Sherman had offered to freed families in early 1865 in the Sea Ilands off the Georgia nad South Carolina coasts. Most seized Confederate land was returned to the original white owners, however.

Ku Klux Klan

White supremacy group that developed into a secret terrorist society. Members wore hoods and robes to hide their identities and often carried out attacks at night. They used threats, burnings, beatings, whippings, and even murder to scare and punish blacks, especially those who were successful or leaders. White Republicans and other southerners who supported blacks were also targets.

Freedmen's Bureau

organization created by the US government in March 1865 to provide relief to needy southerners and help freedpeople move from slavery to freedom. It also helped found more than 4,000 black schools.