The South was completely reconstructed after the Civil War. The North had won the war, and now the south did not know what to do with the peace. Almost four million slaves were freed, politics were dominated by Republicans, transportation had been messed up due to the war, and the economy was in shambles. There are numerous significant moments and important matters of the time known as the reconstruction of the south, but there are four specific occurrences to be discussed in this paper. Those are The 13th Amendment, The Civil Rights Act of 1875, The Compromise of 1877, and The Plessy vs Ferguson case (1876). One topic to be considered, but will not be covered greatly here is the Black codes. Even though the created purpose was to control …show more content…
This bill was passed by the forty-third United States congress and signed into law by president Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875. In the beginning, the public did not want the act to be passed. The act provided that: "All persons ... shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement." The Civil Rights Act of 1875 attempted to extend the common carrier rule throughout the the nation, and to provide a remedy for discrimination in federal court. one result of the Civil Rights Cases was the creation of the "state action" requirement. According to this requirement, only decisions by the state, and not decisions by private parties or corporations, can violate a person's constitutional …show more content…
John H. Ferguson was the judge on the case and decided to uphold the state law. The law was challenged in the supreme court on grounds that it conflicted with the the 13th and the 14th amendments. By a seven to one majority vote, the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine. It was the the seminal post-Reconstruction Supreme court decision that judicially validated state sponsored segregation in public facilities. In a misguided decision, the court ruled that blacks and whites could be separated in public life if the accommodations were equal. It was only 58 years later when the Plessy ruling would be overturned by the Supreme Court in