AFRICAN
AMERICANS AFTER SLAVERY
Interpreting
Primary Sources
All
freedmen...over the age of eighteen years, found on the second Monday in
January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found
unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time, and
all white persons so assembling with freedmen...shall be deemed vagrants, and
on conviction thereof shall be fined in the sum of not exceeding in the crease
of a freedman...fifty dollars, and a white man two hundred dollars, and
imprisoned at the discretion of the court....
And in case
of any freedman...shall fail for five days after the imposition of
any fine...for violation of this act...it shall be ...the duty of the
sheriff...to hire out said freedman...to any person who will, for the shortest
period of service, pay said fines....
--Mississippi
Black Code, 1865
This is an
institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy, and Patriotism...its peculiar objects
being...to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless, from the
indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent and the brutal;
to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate,
and especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers....
Interrogations
to Be Asked
5th. Are you opposed to Negro equality, both
social and political?
6th. Are you in favor of a white man's government
in this country?
--Principles
of the Ku Klux Klan
These men
are not only armed, disciplined, oath-bound members of the Confederate army,
but they work in disguise; and their instruments are terror and crime....They
pretended, I believe, in the outset to be representative ghosts of the
Confederate dead...and they terrified men, women and children, white and
black....They are secret, oath-bound; they murder, rob, plunder, whip, and
scourge; and they commit these crimes, not upon the high and lofty, but upon
the lowly, upon the poor, upon feeble men and women who are utterly
defenseless.
--Senator
John Sherman on the Ku Klux Klan, 1871
It is
assumed that the power of Congress [includes the] authority for declaring by
law that all persons shall have equal accommodations and privileges in all
inns, public conveyances, and places of public amusement; the argument being
that the denial of such equal accommodations and privileges is in itself a
subjection to a species of servitude within the meaning of the [Thirteenth]
amendment....
Can the act
of a mere individual, the owner of the train, the public conveyance, or place
of amusement, refusing the accommodation, be justly regarded as imposing any
badge of slavery.... We are forced to the conclusion that such an act if
refusal has nothing to do with slavery or involuntary servitude. Mere discriminations on account of race [is]
not regarded as badges of slavery.
--Supreme
Court invalidates the postwar Civil Rights Act in the Civil Rights Cases, 1883
We consider
the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption
that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a
badge of inferiority....The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be
overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the Negro
except by an enforced commingling of the two races....
Legislation
is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based
upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in
accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both
races be equal one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other
socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same
plane.
--Supreme
Court upholds segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
The white
race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country....But in view of the
Constitution...there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of
citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither
knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.
In respects of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.
--Justice
John Harlan's dissent, 1896
I do not
think it was ever intended by the Creator that the two races should live
together upon equal terms...One or the other must rule. The people of the South tried to share with
the Negro the government of the country after the war, but the Negro declined
to share with the white man. Black
heels rested cruelly upon white necks for many years after the close of the
war. The white man endured the Negro's
misrule, his insolence, impudence, and infamy.
He suffered his criminal incapacity to govern until the public domain
had been well-nigh squandered and the public treasury looted....We invoked the
law of self-preservation; we arose in the might of an outraged race and...the
southern white man drove from power the scalawag, the carpetbagger, and the
incompetent Negro.
--James K.
Vardaman, 1914
Our greatest
danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the
fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and
fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify
and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations
of life....
You [white
Southerners] can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your
families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and
unresentful people that the world has seen....In all things that are purely
social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things
essential to mutual progress.
--Booker T.
Washington, 1895
As a result
of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years that have occurred:
1. The disenfranchisement of the Negro.
2. The legal creation of a distinct status of
civil inferiority for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from
institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
These
movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington's teachings;
but his propagandas, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier
accomplishment.
--W.E.B.
DuBois, 1903
I believe
Booker T. Washington's heart is right, but that in fawning, cringing and
groveling before the white man he has cost his race their rights, and that
twenty years hence, as he looks back and sees the harm his course has done his
race, he will be brokenhearted over it.
--Charles
Satchel Morris, 1906
While most of
us were agonizing over the Negro's relation to the State and his political
fortunes, Booker Washington saw that there was a great economic empire that
needed to be conquered. He saw an
emancipated race chained to the soil by the Mortgage Crop System, and other
devices, and he said, "You must own your own farms"--and forthwith
there was a second emancipation. He saw
the industrial trades and skilled labor pass from our race into other hands. he said, "The hands as well as the head
must be educated."
--William
Henry Lewis, 1915
Questions
to think about:
1. Describe the obstacles that stood in the way
of economic and political equality for Southern blacks in the late l9th
century.
2. How did the Supreme Court respond to the
growth of racial segregation?
3. Describe the conflicting strategies pursued
by black leaders to achieve full racial equality.
4. What advice did Booker T. Washington offer
to black Southerners?
5. Why did Washington's opponents criticize his
"Atlanta Compromise"? Are
their criticisms valid?
6. Which in your view was the most effective
strategy for late l9th century black Southerners to pursue--accommodation to
racial prejudice and efforts for economic self-development or a commitment to
full political and social equality?
STUDY
AID: THE SUPREME COURT AND CIVIL RIGHTS
Hall v.
DeCuir 1878 Struck down Louisiana law barring racial
discrimination on
railroads
and other "common carriers."
U.S. v.
Harris 1882 Declared federal laws punishing murder and
assault
unconstitutional.
Civil Rights
Cases 1883 Struck down Civil Rights Act of 1875.
Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 Upheld
Louisiana law requiring "separate but equal"
accomodations
on railroads.
Williams v.
Mississippi 1898 Upheld a state law requiring a literacy test
for voting.
INTERPRETING
STATISTICS: AFRICAN AMERICANS--FROM
SLAVERY TO FREEDOM
Blacks
Living Outside the South
1860 400,000
1870 500,000
1880 600,000
Questions
to think about:
1. Where did most blacks live after the Civil
War--in the South or outside the South?
2. In what conditions did most Southern blacks
live after the Civil War?
Lynchings
1885 184 1935 20
1890 96
1940 5
1895 179 1945 1
1900 115 1950 2
1905 62
1955 3
1910 76
1915 69
1920 61
1925 17
1930 21
Questions
to think about:
1. When was lynching most common?
2. What factors may have contributed to a
decline in lynching?