Reconstruction: African American Unhomeliness

Reconstruction: African American Unhomeliness Rather than deal with an unwelcoming North who had done nearly everything in their power to keep the population of newly freed slaves to a minimum: African American chose, and if not were forced to stay in the Jim Crow south or be sent to prison, sold at auction, or put to death. The false sense of freedom given to the newly emancipated blacks, provided no aid if laws were looked at as subjective and any success given to support their causes, returned with further hate, and violence. As a result the paradox of the time made the failures of reconstruction a result of any success granted during that period. The Emancipation Proclamation signed January 1, 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, declared, that

As stated before, following the Emancipation Proclamation many African Americans remained enslaved due to the abstractness of the initial act. The 13th sought to guarantee a universal understanding of the abrogation of slavery, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, nor any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (Amendment XIII). Clearing up all remaining questions and oppositions to the proclamation of former slaves, the 13th amendment solved the long standing question of what the country was to do with the nearly 4 Million slaves at the end of the Civil War. The idea of relocation to another country interested many, however it was never seen as practical, and citizenship had remained in the dominion of whites, so the only thing left to try was an abridged version of

Chosen for his humble beginning in the South, Johnson gave Lincoln’s 1864 campaign the push he needed to win the votes of southerners. Left with the difficult task of rebuilding a broken country, the legacy of Johnson’s politics can be summed as; pardons of white southerners, and the appointment of provisional governments elected by whites alone to establish local government in the South, as a result of these pardons, the conventions of the antebellum south resumed. The introduction of laws such as Black Codes in the South which, “granted blacks certain rights such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access to court” (Foner, 563) acted as the first attempt at an abridgment to citizenship, even though the codes denied blacks the right to testify against whites, server on juries, and vote, they signified a move in the direction for the enfranchisement of African Americans. Prior to the ratification of the codes, African American marriages were not recognized by the court, so widows of men who died in the Civil War were not granted any benefits following their passing. By providing legal recognition of marriage to blacks, widows were then claim benefits and any other property left by their late