chapter 12 section 2

Enforcement acts

(also known as the Ku Klux Klan Acts) in 1870 and 1871. they made it offense to interfere with a citizen's right to vote.

African Americans use political power

1,500 black men, helped usher republican Party into south. New black citizens served south. Mississippi and south Carolina black speakers of house. African Americans are free and can vote. White southerners aren't allowed to vote because they weren't allowed in the union.

Republican Governments Bring Change

1870, former Confederate states, requirements under Radical Reconstruction, rejoined union.

Freed people build new communities

Newly freed African Americans wanted new social institutions and economic relationships. Most of them wanted to leave the plantations.

Scalawags and Carpetbaggers take part in southern politics

Scalawags, southern white critics were white men who had been locked out of pre-civil war politics. Scalawags found allies; northern white or black men who relocated to south. Northerners came seeking improving their economic or political situations, or to help make better lives for freedmen. Southerners labeled newcomers "carpetbaggers,". Blanch Bruce started as a slave in Virginia, he learned to read from his owner's son. Bruce left plantation to move to Missouri, where ran a school for black children.

Systems for sharing the land

Sharecropping system, which embraced most of the south's black and white poor, a landowner dictated the crop and provided the sharecropper with a place to live as well as seeds and tools, in return for a "share" of the harvested crop. Share-tenancy was much like sharecropping, except that the farmworker chose what crop he would plant and bought his supplies.

The federal government responds

The acts made it a federal offense to interfere with a citizen's right to vote.

Many challenges

The quality of medical care, housing, and economic production slowed down behind the north. Legal protection limited for African Americans. Racial violence was a problem. Public schools grew slowly, only one half of southern children attended by end of 1870s. New school system was expensive. Southerners chose segregation, separation of the races. Having two schools one white, one black severely strained southern economy. Political offices were a route to wealth and power. People willing to bribe politicians to gain loans or contracts.

Tenant Farmers

The resident paid cash payment to a property-owner and then was allowed to choose and manage his individual harvest and free to choose where he lived.

Violence undermines reform efforts

White people don't have jobs so the blacks are mad at the white southerners.

Successes

Women left home and went to the reconstruction south where they had medical facilities or orphanages, and other relief agencies where they could work. They did the shaping of a public school system. Most radical white republicans suggested integration, combining the schools unpopular Tax supported school system was a benefit toward the reconstruction. Building railroads two big advantages. First, construction of tracks rail cars created jobs. Second, rail lines carry produce industrial goods expanded markets. States gave public land or tax payers' money to railroad speculators. Some speculators repaid the loans some southern leaders didn't.

segregation

forced separation, oftentimes by race

share-tenancy

much like sharecropping, except that the farmer chose what crop he would plant and bought his own supplies.

carpetbagger

negative term for Northerners who moved to the south after the Civil War to make money

Scalawag

negative term for a southern white who supported the Republican Party after the Civil War

Ku Klux Klan

organization that promotes hatred and discrimination against specific ethnic and religious groups

integration

process of bringing people of different races, religions, and social classes together

tenant farming

system in which a farmer paid rent to a landowner for the use of the land

sharecropping

system in which a farmer tended a portion of a planter's land in return for a share of the crop

Remaking the southern economy

Before the civil war, 5 percent of the wealthiest white southerners owned half of region's land. After the war, millions of landless black people for work farm laborers land of others. General Sherman and Radical Republicans sell land to freed people didn't want provide a solution. African American however, able to gather together means buy land. 1880, about 7 percent south's by African Americans.

Work and family

For first time many African Americans could legalize marriage. Black workers had to settle for under slavery: substandard housing poor, return for hard labor. White or black who themselves were often poor.

The Ku Klux Klan strikes back

Formed in Tennessee in 1866. They burned homes, schools, and churches and beating, maiming, or killing African Americans and their white allies.

Schools and churches

Freed people realized value of reading and learning to perform basic math. Freedom's Bureau schools filled fast. 1866 150,000 African American students' children and adults. 3 years after that number had gone to double that which is 300,000. FB aided black colleges. Encouraged many northern churches and giving organizations to support independent schools.