1. Is war necessary to bring about change?
Topic 8 Reconstruction

2. Reconstruction
To many Americans, the most important issue was deciding the fate of the Confederate states after the Civil War.
The Constitution provided no guidance on secession or readmission of states.
Legislation
Provisions
Freedman’s Bureau Acts ( )
Create a government agency to provide services to freed slaves and war victims
Civil Rights Act of 1866
Grant citizenship to African Americans and outlaw the Black Codes
Fourteenth Amendment (1868)
Guarantees citizenship to African Americans and prohibits states from passing laws to take away citizens rights
Fifteenth Amendment (1870)
States that no citizen can be denied the right to vote because of “race, color, or previous servitude”.

3. Effects of Reconstruction
Union is restored.
African Americans gain citizenship and voting rights.
South’s economy and infrastructure are improved.
Southern states establish public school system.
Ku Klux Klan and other groups terrorize African Americans.
Sharecropping system takes hold in the South.
Poll Tax
$1.00
to vote
Literacy Tests
Restrictions on
African Americans
Voting Rights
Grandfather
Clauses
Violence
Property
Test

4. Jim Crow Laws
By the end of the 1800’s Jim Crow laws became a way of life in the South.
Widespread segregation became a reality.
In 1896, a Supreme Court ruling came down that upheld the constitutionality of Jim Crow laws = Plessey V Ferguson
As long as states provided “separate but equal” facilities,
they did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

5. African American Leaders Seek Reform
Booker T. Washington
Born a slave
Argued that African
Americans needed to accommodate themselves to segregation, they should not focus their energies on seeking to overturn Jim Crow laws.
Instead, he called for African Americans to “pull themselves up by their own boot straps” by establishing their reputations and working hard.
W.E.B. Du Bois
Criticized
Washington’s approach.
Argued that African Americans should demand full and immediate equality,
and not limit themselves to vocational education.
He did not feel that the right to vote was a privilege but rather it was earned.
Ida B. Wells
African American women who fought for justice.
Bought a local newspaper, renamed it Free Speech,
and wrote numerous articles that condemned the mistreatment of African Americans.