Summary Of Climbing Up To Glory A Short History Of African Americans

Some might argue that the right to free speech or the right to purchase whatever you choose with your own money is what makes you a true American citizen. In Wilbert L. Jenkins’s book, Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the right to vote is a major bonus when obtaining the rights of being an American citizen. They are so important in fact that African Americans never stopped fighting to obtain them.

Ever since the founding of the United States of America, slavery of those with darker complexion were a common household object of every white citizen. On top of hard days of labor, abuse, and malnutrition, they simply had no rights because they were not considered a citizen of the

This upset Southern whites tremendously. In order to solve the problem, the Ku Klux Klan, which was formed in 1866 made a significant come back by jumping up their violence and intimidating acts. Their goal was “to intimidate blacks so that they would fear for their lives and stop supporting the Republican Party” (222). In order to accomplish this, the Klansmen set out wearing their full white cloaks to whip, shoot, and rape the freedmen who were able to vote. They made camp at the poll stations and gave warning to the African Americans who were planning to go to them in order to vote. Even though the Ku Klux Klan did stop many freedmen from voting, a few still got through in order to vote

One of their main targets were two forms of transportation, streetcars and horsecars. They organized many protests and eventually “the streetcar gave in and announced that segregation was ended” (215). Even though the accomplished one major problem, it truly wasn’t solved and there were many more to go. After years of fighting for their rights in office, several African Americans finally were elected into office. Even though whites still held a majority in office, “out of a total of 127 members in the first legislative, eighty-seven were blacks” (211). Two of those men were Alonzo J. Ransier, 1870, and Richard Gleaves, 182. Times were beginning to look up since the blacks were finding ways to get around the white restrictions and to vote for the important decisions that every male citizen of the United States was meant to make.

Yet two terrible things happen once they got into office. When the Southern whites realized that there were blacks in office, they picked up their attacks. The Ku Klux Klan murdered male African Americans and often the females were raped. Then the African Americans in office were criticized and threatened. Even though they held positions in office, they still not possess complete