Reconstruction South

Changing Society Confederates did not disappear, they still disliked the government However, they lost power New leadership takes over society African Americans Pro-Union southerners (scalawags) Northerners

Economy of the South The economy of South had focused around cash crops and slavery No slavery = no labor to work Southerners use sharecropping System where workers use land and supplies of land owner Workers then pay off debt to land owners with crops Leads to a inescapable cycle of poverty Many former slaves become sharecroppers and end up working for the same people who enslaved them

Discussion In what ways did society in the South change following the Civil War? How is sharecropping similar and different from the slavery/ cash crop system or the pre- Civil War South? Predict how white Southerners might react to the societal changes of Reconstruction.

Resistance to Change Many white southerners did not accept the idea that former slaves were equal They worked to make sure that didn’t happen Black codes: laws to keep African Americans from becoming equal

Resistance to Change Ku Klux Klan: secret society that use fear and violence to display racism against African Americans White supremacists Laws were passed to keep African Americans from voting

Exodusters Headed west to the Great Plains and to Northern cities Migration of African Americans out of the South Headed west to the Great Plains and to Northern cities Escape discrimination and lack of opportunity Benjamin “Pap” Singleton of Tennessee supported the exodus of as many as 40,000 African Americans to Kansas