Reconstruction
intheSouth
Reconstruction government helped reform
the South
• Carpetbaggers – Northern-born Republicans who had moved South
after the war.
• Scalawags – Southerners who supported Reconstruction governments
• African Americans were the largest group of southern Republican voters
• African Americans participated in the govt. during reconstruction by voting,
serving as representatives in state legislature and in Congress, and held local
offices
• 1870 Hiram Revels became the first African American in the U.S. Senate
Ku Klux Klan – A secret society created by white
southerners in 1866 that used terror and violence
to keep African Americans from obtaining their
civil rights.
Causes
Effects
• Opposition of
African Amer.
Leaders
• Violence against
African Amer. and
white Republicans
• Unhappy with
federal troops in
South
• Local leaders do
little to stop them
• Dislike of
Reconstruction govt.
• Federal govt. stops
them
As Reconstruction ended, the rights of
African Americans were restricted
• As Americans became increasingly worried about economic
problems and government corruption, the Republican Party
began to abandon Reconstruction
• Compromise of 1877 – an agreement to settle the disputed pres.
Election of 1867; Dem. Agreed to accept Republican Hayes in
return for the removal of fed. Troops from the South
• Democrats that brought their party back to power in the South were
called Redeemers.
• Redeemers wanted to reduce the size of state government and limit the
rights of African Americans.
As Reconstruction ended, the rights of
African Americans were restricted
• Redeemers set up the poll tax in effort to deny the vote to African Americans
• Some states required black voters to pass a literacy test
• Grandfather clause written into the law allowed men whose
fathers or grandfathers could vote before 1867 did not
have to pay a tax or take a literacy test.
Almost all white men could escape the voting restrictions.
As Reconstruction ended, the rights of
African Americans were restricted
• Redeemer govts also introduced segregation
• Segregation – The forced separation of whites
and African Amer. in public places
• Jim Crow laws – Laws that enforced segregation
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – Ruled segregation was allowed,
established the “separate-but-equal” doctrine for public facilities
• Forced to use separate public schools, libraries, and parks
Year
Total victims
Whites
Blacks
Percent of victims
who were black
1882
113
64
49
43%
1885
184
110
74
40
1890
96
11
85
88
1895
179
66
113
63
1900
115
9
106
92
As Reconstruction ended, the rights of
African Americans were restricted
• Sharecropping – A system used on
southern farms after the Civil War in
which farmers worked land owned by
someone else in return for a small portion
of the crops
Southern business leaders relied on
industry to rebuild the South
• Southern economy suffered through cycles of good and bad years
• Most successful industrial development in the south after
Reconstruction was textile production
• Most blacks were not allowed to work in these textile mills
• Benefits of mill work: Employed entire families, women were valued
workers, was alternative to farming
• Drawbacks of mill work: Tedious work & long hours, asthma, brownlung disease, injuries, death, few advancement opportunities for women
Rights of African Americans before and after
Reconstruction
Voted
Limited voting rights & little
or no political participation
Moved and lived anywhere
Limited work opportunities
Participated in politics
Sharecropping