Essay About Local Terror And African Americans

African Americans: The Loss And Gain Of Freedom(1865-1900
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African Americans: The Loss and Gain of Freedom(1865-1900)
The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865. The period known after the war was
called Reconstruction. During Reconstruction (also called Radical Reconstruction), the
South was in economic, political, and social trouble. In 1865 Congress established the
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. This became known as the
Freedmens Bureau. It was a bureau ran by the United States Army, with several field
agents that provided medical care, food, helped black and white refugees deprived by the
war to return home, and established schools.
Goals of the African-Americans were to secure physical protection from abuse
and local terror by local whites, equal civil rights, economic independence, and political
participation. During Reconstruction African Americans were given the right to vote, the
use of hospitals, right to an education, to become part of the legal system (sheriffs,
judges, jurors, and policemen), the right to get well paying jobs, and the right to own
land. African-Americans began to cut their ties to their slave owners, go into the towns
and cities to find jobs, and find lost family members. Besides securing land, education
was one of their top priorities. With the military came people to help run the occupied
states and teachers who wanted to educate African-Americans. These people were called
carpetbaggers by hostile southern whites. Southerners that worked with carpetbaggers
were called scalawags, In time scalawags became known as “white trash.”
Over 1,000 schools were built, teacher-training institutions were created, and several
black colleges were founded and some were financed with the help of the Freedmens
Bureau. The Freedmens Bureau had inadequate funds, was unable to discontinue most
poverty, and it failed to prevent the emergence of the Black Codes. The bureau was
later terminated in 1872. In June 1866, Congress passed the fourteenth Amendment to
the Constitution, and it was ratified in 1868. It provided blacks with citizenship and
guaranteed that federal and state laws applied equally to blacks and whites.
The South was transformed for African-Americans during the Reconstruction,
but many of the benefits gained during that time were quickly reversed by southern
democrats during the Redemption. In an attempt to reestablish white dominance southern
legislatures in 1865 passed and created Black Codes. Black Codes were a way served as a
way to limit and control the freedom of ex-slaves and laborers. Black Codes stripped
African-American of all their newfound freedoms and pretty much controlled all aspects
of their everyday life. Black Codes were passed limiting the freedoms that the black race
gained African-Americans were denied the right to bear arms, racial intermarriage,
possessing alcoholic beverages, sitting on trains, being on city streets at night, and
meeting in large groups. If African-Americans were not employed by a white employer
they could be arrested, jailed, or fined. Slavery was abolished in name only. The
thirteenth