The Gilded Age: African American Challenges and AccomplishmentsEssay Preview: The Gilded Age: African American Challenges and AccomplishmentsReport this essaySydney HeinleDr. ChalifouxHY 204-1420 September 2013The Gilded Age: African American Challenges and AccomplishmentsAlthough Du bois Reconstruction and its Benefits portrays the hardships of reconstruction in the African American community during the Gilded Age, its intent is to make known the progress throughout their community during this time period. The reading even explains the negro governments attaining free public schooling. Although African Americans succeeded in a few parts of reconstructing after the Civil War, they struggled to find jobs, attend school, and receive suffrage. The emancipation laws were not executed strictly after the war, as some blacks were re-enslaved, and white men would patrol the counties, driving back African Americans when found wandering about. Agencies such as The Freedmans Bureau, the negro churches, and the negro schools came to the south to help solve the problem, while reconstruction politicians made decisions on how they must handle it.
Black Codes were laws that restricted African American freedom. They ensured blacks would be available for cheap labor even after emancipation, and if they refused to sign the contract they would be re-enslaved. They faced segregation, and paid taxes for the schools they werent allowed to even attend; until the northern missionaries came down. According to Du Bois, The north and south both didnt want negro suffrage because the south believed it would uplift the negro, and the north was worried that they wouldnt be educated enough to make the correct decisions. These are all challenges African Americans faced every day, which made it harder to succeed at their goals.
Three agencies contributed to the success of the African American community. The negro church, the negro school, and The Freedmans Bureau all three contributed to teaching and training these ex-slaves into becoming educated members of society. “Seldom in the history of the world has an almost totally illiterate population been given the means of self education in so short a time” (Du Bois, 782). By 1877, 571,506 African American children were in school. This shows great success in the African Community, with help from the northern religious bodies. Not only were they being educated and given more equal opportunities, but they were about to have a say politically. For example, in Booker T. Washingtons Up From Slavery, he reads us the Atlanta Constitution. This is a great achievement because he is one of the only African Americans to give a speech in front of a majority of white people.
Many of the blacks who served in the South, and in the South was, as a group, a community of self learners. It was this community from which blacks in the South could learn. Among them: • John P. Mitchell, John W. Williams, and Joseph A. Henshaw; the Southern Baptists and the Southern African Church; • Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Jr.; and Jesse Jackson, who gave an inspiring speech.
The story of the young Negro leader and a group of African American ministers, including a white church minister, John F. P. Mitchell — who, with his first wife, was born in the North, and whose life was filled with a sense of freedom, independence, and peace — has made for a vivid example of the power and influence of freedom in a community that can be proud of the contributions it made to the development of the American race by the aid of freedman labor. This is a book that has been written, and continues to be written, about the influence of the freedman family on the progress of the Negro movement, and the contribution they made to this movement.
The Negro people are on the cusp of a revolution which will be even more remarkable than slavery! A new generation will emerge through the African church in this country and we will see the emergence of black leaders of every community.
Mr. Washingtons, with whom you write and direct the organization, offers a unique insight and perspective into the lives and fortunes of thousands of African Americans from every generation living on opposite sides of the continent. His work in Africa has been invaluable for us. He is the only person I know in the world that has ever written about the African American movement. His work has been of great value to African American civil rights groups in many African American communities, and it is one more reason why the American people need someone like President P. C. Johnson to lead their political efforts.
He is now one of the most knowledgeable and articulate advocates of the African American Revolution. He will help us understand the strength and spirit of its movement and the future political possibilities. And he will tell the story of the people who overcame their common problems together. The man is a visionary and we will never forget his contributions to the emancipation of thousands of African Americans in the South.
Mr. Allen is the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Professor of Public Policy at the Ohio Agricultural University. He lives in Akron, Ohio.
All our children are born to poverty; and we have a role to take in raising and sustaining the children we have. Dr. B.J. Bales Jr. writes frequently: “The Negro people are the most prosperous people the World had ever seen. By this I mean the men, women, and children of their mothers, men and children who have been brought up in this United States of America in the nineteenth century and in particular to the North and East, and in particular in the South. Most of them are educated and capable of a life of prosperity and the enjoyment of freedom. They have lived their lives under a system of slavery which denied them the fundamental rights they all deserve. This system had the power to secure them the opportunity to live their lives free of servitude. Under this scheme, they were forced to work for an hour, a day, or a day and worked long hours to reach those ends. In