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The Role of State Governments (Southern States and Reconstruction (The…
The Role of State Governments
US Federal System and States' Rights
US federal government gives lots of power to States. 1865, Federal govt defeated what they saw as a rebellion by southern states. South passed Black Codes to intimidate and control African American freedmen
Southern States and Reconstruction
The period of Reconstruction saw African Americans in the new Constitutional Assemblies which drew up constitutions
South Carolina, heartland of movement for Southern State rights pre-Civil War, African American representatives outnumbered whites
Civil rights were achieved in the south, but only because of federal troops and only in theory
Reaction After 1877 and the Jim Crow Laws
When the North compromised with the South for southern self-government on racial affairs in 1877, it unleashed terror on African Americans and forced them out of political life.
All-white legislature passed
Jim Crow Laws
:
Separate hospitals, prisons, schools, churches, cemeteries and restrooms
Codes of behaviour regulating social and sexual relations between different races
Complex regulations to qualify African Americans for voting (poll tax, grandfather clauses, literacy tests), assuring exclusion
Did little or nothing to control violence and lynching of African Americans
Issues Over Integration
Little Rock
Arkansas State Government resisted ruling of
Brown v Board of Education 1954
that school segregation was unconstitutional
Arkansas Governor
Orval Faubus
prevented
9
black students entering the Central High School of Little Rock by using the
National Guard
President
Eisenhower
put the state national guard under federal control and used the federal
armed forces
to ensure desegregation and integration
James Meredith
1962, President
Kennedy
used federal law officers to enforce African American
James Meredith's
entry into a forcibly segregated Mississippi school
Alabama
Alabama State were particularly supportive of segregation. Governor
George Wallace
in 1963 stated
"Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"
Heavy-handed state authority measures,
Eugene 'Bull' Connor
used fire hoses and attack dogs against civil rights protestors (MLK) in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963
This violence increased media coverage, which turned public and world opinion against segregation and caused federal intervention