C121 Task 3 Part A. Reconstruction changed race relations in the United States as illustrated by white resistance groups, black codes and sharecropping. The freeing of slaves by the thirteenth amendment was a huge step in the right direction. Blacks could now live their lives free and make their own decisions, but things weren’t perfect. White southerners were against Reconstruction and emancipation and many came together to express their resistance. These white resistance groups ranged from small local groups to widespread ones such as The Ku Klux Klan. In North Carolina there was a magistrate that beat a black man on a street. Other small groups in different states began to target and terrorize blacks, especially those who they felt were …show more content…
With all the laws, taxes and codes that the blacks had to follow, owning land was unrealistic for many. Blacks turned to a cheaper alternative, renting. Unfortunately, this also had its downfalls, such as the lack of white landowners willing to rent to blacks. This led to a system called sharecropping. Sharecropping was an arrangement between white landowners and free blacks, the landowner would provide goods like food and seeds and the blacks would farm and use a portion of their crop as a payment to the landowners. This arrangement was formed in 1868 and by the 1880s it was common with most of the arrangements being half for the owner and half for themselves. Sharecropping seemed to benefit both races. The whites had permanent and dependent laborers while the blacks were now freed from supervision. Despite those benefits sharecropping turned out to be disastrous. Both the landowners and blacks fell into debt, leaving the black sharecroppers bound to the landowners. This situation turned out to be almost as oppressive as slavery. (Norton, …show more content…
In the 1870s a movement called Social Gospel appeared. Walter Rauschenbusch, Charles Sheldon, and Washington Gladden, were all Protestant Ministers that led this movement to fight against social injustices. They believed that helping others was the way to salvation and true Christians should live their life through the thinking of “What would Jesus do?”. Even those not led by religion began to believe that they should help others. An example of this is the 700,000 subscribers to a newspaper titled Appeal to Reason. The newspaper was created by a socialist party made up of members who wanted the United States to adopt goals that other countries have. A few of these benefits include low-cost housing, labor reform and old-age pensions. Several more groups who wanted reform began to spread nationally. These groups knew that there were injustices happening and that helping was the moral thing to do. Some of the injustices they fought against were abuse of power, women’s rights and protecting the welfare of all classes instead of just the upper class. These progressive views were often published and voiced by journalists. These journalists would expose the injustices and corruptions occurring and were dubbed muckrakers. Whether in established groups or voicing an individual opinion, numerous people started fighting injustices due to morality or religious reasons. (Norton,
The landowners took advantage of their tenants by overcharging for land and underpaying for the crops. The tenants began falling deeper into debt. They could not leave until they paid off their debt, which was nearly impossible. Although former slaves had been freed, they were still facing many struggles in free life. America’s plan for reconstruction had good intent, but did not give African Americans the equality they deserved.
Not stating that they were completely free from harsh conditions, but they were free from slavery, allowing Southern African Americans to join tenant and sharecropping. “The sharecropping system arose in the years immediately following the civil war, apparently as a compromise between freedmen who wanted land and cash-starved planters who found it difficult to pay wages” (Whayne 50). African Americans did not like this idea because these actions would remind them of their past of being slaves, they had just gained their freedom and wanted complete power and control to own their own land. Even though many African Americans did not agree with the sharecropping system, this tend to be the only choice that allowed the men in the south that had to support their families to continue working. By surprise Lee Wilson joined in the tenant and sharecropping union, but he treated his men a lot better than majority of the tenants did.
In the 1870s fights broke out, people were murdered, and the country was in chaos. It left us wondering who's to blame for the end of Reconstruction? After the Civil war slaves became freedmen but they didn’t have rights. An era called Reconstruction by historians began. Some people supported it.
At that time the purpose of the newspaper was to be a voice for low income people that were struggling
Social Gospel was a Protestant Christian movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. In Social Darwinism, a person’s wealth, social status, and property showed their fitness. Poor people were considered lazy and fell under wealthy people and were seen as weak, or not fit to survive. Social Gospel covered excess urbanization and industrialization. Christian people helped workers and poor people and favored them over wealthy people.
In the 19th century, slavery and the Reconstruction was a sore subject for the South. Reconstruction forged civil rights for African-Americans, but once the North’s influenced waned in the South, the South terrorized African-Americans and blocked them from accessing their newfound rights. While Reconstruction may have brought civil rights, those rights were quickly squashed by the South’s racism. Even after certain freedoms were securely gained, every new attempt to make African-Americans equal to the white populace was contested. A large group of people were happy to see slavery ended and civil rights rise.
The people who owned more land paid more. The people who owned less land paid less if any at all. That is why Samuel Parris used the system to his advantage. Parris kept naming women for the girls to kill off by accusing them of witchcraft. These women, in turn, had the property that Samuel Parris could give to men who already owned more land.
As a result of this, racist organizations were founded to wreaked havoc on former slaves. Secret societies in the southern united states, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia used violence against the blacks. Their goal was often to keep blacks out of politics. Our textbook states, “In other states, where blacks were a majority or where the populations of the two races were almost equal, whites used outright intimidation and violence to undermine the Reconstruction regimes” (Brinkley 368). The people involved in such organizations were using violence to take away the fifteenth amendment right from the former slaves.
he Reconstruction Era was the process of reunifying the country and reconstructing the South after the ruins the Civil War had left it in. This era was substantial in history because it encouraged to protect the rights of former slaves and African Americans as citizens of America. However, it was ineffective in settling the nation’s social, monetary, physical, and political dilemmas. The inadequacy of political focus, decline to bring about long-term racial integration, and authorizing the passing of black codes, voter qualifications, and other anti-progressive legislation to repeal the rights that blacks had gained, emphasizes the disappointment of what the focus of the Reconstruction Era was all about but the infrastructure it had established
For example, the AAA or the Agricultural Adjustment Administration hurt African Americans badly. “40 percent of all black workers made their living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers.” (Digital history 1) However, “White landlords could make more money by leaving land untilled than by putting land back into production.” (Digital History 1).
It even allowed some black farmers to buy and work their own land. Parents sacrificed to send their children to school and a few proudly watch their sons and daughters graduate from
Reconstruction caused prejudice and inequality. To elaborate, the creation of the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Codes were both in the time period of reconstruction, which caused chaos and violence throughout the Union. One of the goals of reconstruction was to repair the economy in the South, because it depended on slavery, which was now illegal, due to the thirteenth amendment. The South’s economic system now depended on Sharecropping, which caused former slaves to be in constant debt and was unjust to the black society. The reconstruction time period, was a time of dispute between the Union.
To keep this from happening farmers made the sharecroppers indebted to them keeping the sharecroppers from having any money to support themselves. As stated, sharecropping had drastic effects on the relationship between black people and white people. Examples of this are shown when the article states: “Well, I’ve had so much trouble with these black people, I’m going to employ white people” (Painter para. 13) Additionally, the overall actions between black and white people rose wages (Painter para.
It has been over fifty years since slavery had ended in the South with the enactment of the 13th amendment, leaving all former slaves and African-Americans free. The Great Migration, which started in the 1910s, was seen by African-Americans as a new hope, a chance to leave what they saw as the restricting rural South to find better opportunities, jobs, and the private life in the North. In 1917, when most of the migrations occurred, ten-year-old Rubie Bond and her parents left Mississippi to travel to Wisconsin. Fifty years later, in “Beloit Bicentennial Oral History Project” (1976), Rubie Bond was interviewed as part of Beloit College Archives’ project to document the history of the Great Migration. In her interview, Bond recollected why her family and many others left the South.
For example, black schools received far less funding than white schools and the same held true for all segregated public institutions. As the majority of the African American population was concentrated in the South these developments affected millions. Although the Progressive Era is referred to as a golden age of agriculture, the vast majority of African Americans were sharecroppers and thus benefited minimally. African Americans were painfully aware of the exploitive nature of sharecropping as evidenced by the Southern African American folk saying, “[d]e white man he got ha’f de crop/Boll-Weevil took de res’” (Doc 1).