• African American Activism (415)

• With the passage of the Reconstruction Acts by Congress, African Americans saw a new era beginning.

• The rise of Congressional Reconstruction (14th Amendment, 13th Amendment, 15th Amendment, and the Civil Rights and Reconstruction Acts) gave former slaves further hope for equal citizenship with whites.

• Many registered to vote and began lobbying for the equality promised by the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment

• African American Activism (415)– African Americans joined political

groups such as the Union League.

– The Union League: spread the view of the Republican Party to freed slaves as well as to poor whites.

– The Union League also built schools and churches for African Americans.

– African American education and literacy expanded greatly during Reconstruction

– White northerners founded many schools, but African Americans launched educational institutions as well

• African American Activism (415)– African Americans became more involved in

politics, they served as delegates to all state constitutional conventions: when states were writing their constitutions

– In Louisiana and South Carolina, African American delegates outnumbered the whites

– African Americans were the largest group of southern Republican voters.

– During Reconstruction, more than 600 African Americans were elected as representative of state legislatures

– Sixteen African Americans were elected to Congress.

– African American Hiram Revels of Mississippi was elected to the U.S. Senate to replace Jefferson Davis

– Other African Americans held state and local offices

• Reconstruction Governments: (416)– Carpetbaggers: Northern

Republicans – both whites and African Americans – eager to participate in state conventions increased resentment among many white southerners

– The newcomers, they joked, were “needy adventurers” of “the lowest class” who would carry everything they owned in a carpetbag – a type of cheap suitcase

– Scalawags (scoundrels) were southern whites who had backed the Union cause and now supported Reconstruction – the former Confederates did not like the carpetbaggers or the scalawags

• Reconstruction Governments: (416)

– Reconstruction supporters soon formed a Republican alliance – they saw themselves as the “party of progress, and civilization.”

– The Republican alliance hoped to seize economic and political power from the planters and then rebuild the South, improving conditions of poor white farmers and African Americans alike.

– The Republican alliance used its political leverage to draft new state constitutions

• The Republican state governments abolished property qualifications for jurors and political candidates.

• They also guaranteed white and African American men the right to vote

• The Klu Klux Klan: (416-417)– The Reconstruction

governments’ reforms, the election of African Americans to office, and African Americans’ growing political participation were soon met by a vicious response

– Angry whites formed secret terrorist groups to prevent African Americans from voting – The Klu Klux Klan

– The Klu Klux Klan was founded in 1866 by six former Confederates

• The Klu Klux Klan: (416-417)– Klan Attacks: (416-417)

• The head of the Klan – “Grand Wizard” Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former slave-trader and Confederate general – bluntly warned Republicans that he intended “to kill the radicals.”

• The Klan and similar groups were determined to destroy the Republican Party, to keep African Americans from voting, and to frighten African American political leaders into submission

• The Klan murdered or attacked many Republican legislatures both white and black

• Klan members also attacked African Americans who voted for Republican candidates

• Klansmen also assaulted and killed thousands of African Americans whom they regarded as too successful

• Klansmen burned homes, schools, and churches, and stole livestock in a n effort to chase African Americans and pro-Reconstruction whites from the South

• The Klu Klux Klan: (416-417)– Steps against the Klan: (417)

• African Americans struck back at the Klan when possible.

– They burned barns of Klansmen– As the violence mounted, African

Americans demanded that Congress act to “enable us to exercise the rights of citizens.”

– Congress responded to this call in 1870 and 1871 by passing legislation to stop violence against African Americans

– Congress passed the Enforcement Acts: these three laws empowered the federal government to combat terrorism with military force and to prosecute guilty individuals

– The Democrats called them the Force Acts and claimed they threatened individual freedom

• Changes in Reconstruction: (417-419)– Shifting Republican Interests:

(417)• A particularly severe economic

depression, known as the Panic of 1873, hit the nation

• Republican leaders came under pressure as workers threatened strikes and farmers demanded relief

• Republicans called for the abandonment of universal voting rights so thousands of immigrants joined the Democratic party

• The Republicans call to restrict the voting rights of immigrants, and the urban poor, weakened public support for African Americans’ rights as well

• Changes in Reconstruction: (417-419)

• The Southern Redeemers: (418-419)– The discontent caused by the Panic

of 1873 turned voters against the Republican-controlled Congress.

– When Congress came back together, Republicans made one final effort to enforce Reconstruction by enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1875: This Act prohibited businesses that served the public – such as hotels and transportation facilities- from discriminating against African Americans

• Changes in Reconstruction: (417-419)• The Southern Redeemers: (418-419)

– The Compromise of 1877: this deal solved the problem between leading Republicans and southern Democrats.

– The Compromise of 1877 Said: in return for the Democrats’ acceptance of Rutherford B. Hayes (republican) as president, the Republicans agreed to withdraw the remaining federal troops from the South

– Redeemers: the individuals behind the Democrats return to power. They wrote state constitutions and overturned many of the Reconstruction governments’ reforms