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YES African Americans in the Gilded Age - Coggle Diagram
YES African Americans in the Gilded Age
Political
Slavery had been ended by the Emancipation Proclamation 1863 and the 13th amendment (banned involuntary servitude)
Some representation, 22 in congress in the 1870s. Blanche K Bruce was the first AA to complete a full term as senator, he was born into slavery.
Slaughterhouse cases (SC)1873 limited the scope of the fourteenth amendment, ruling that the Privileges or Immunities Clause individuals only granted/protected federal citizenship, not state, barring them from state benefits and local elections.
Last AA congressman, George H White, retired in 1901. There would be no more for another 28 years, 72 in southern states
Voting rights where restricted e.g. grandfather clauses, literacy tests, poll taxes. AAs were systematically barred from exercising their rights and were a near non-existent voting class by 1895
The 13 amendment allowed slavery in the context of criminal punishment. This led to a disproportionate number being in prisons and labour camps, often forming gangs which kept them in slavery for longer. Being in prison disqualified them from voting.
Social
Most locked out from the freedoms of the north, 95% of the AA population resided in the South by 1877.
Black codes in southern states included: banning interracial marriage, prohibiting AAs from owning/renting in certain neighbourhoods, restrictions on owning firearms.
Education improved somewhat: literacy rate increased from 1/20 to 1/2 from 1865 to 1895.
A number of religious organisations were formed, such as Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1877, later joined by MLK
Segregated transport swept across the south after the Tennessee Railroad Act 1881
Plessy v Ferguson 1896 created the legal precedent that AAs were equal but seperated.
Although the north was not legally separated, economic deprivation caused it to be so. Ghettos held high amounts of AAs in cities e.g. 5,000 in Chicago, 23,000 in Harlem.
Some 40,000 AAs joined westward expansion and moved out of the south, however this was rare. AA populations in the north rose with 500,000 moving in the period, half of whom were from the south.
Lynching peaked. In 1882 to 1889, 2,500 AAs were lynched.
Population from 1870-1900 would increase from 4.4 million to 9.9 million, suggesting a substantial improvement in quality of life
Economic
Black codes in southern states included: freedmen without legal employment could be fined or imprisoned for vagrancy, limitations on ownership, restrictions to education, forced into exploitative labour
Although the north was not legally separated, economic deprivation caused it to be so. Ghettos held high amounts of AAs in cities e.g. 5,000 in Chicago, 23,000 in Harlem.
Washington's (individual) 1895 Atlanta compromise speech encouraged AAs to create a parallel economy to develop separate from their white oppressors e.g. North Caroline Mutual Life Insurance 1898
47,000/8 million had professional careers e.g. doctor, lawyer, teacher. ----- millionaires include Madam C J Walker by 1905, Jeremiah G Hamilton by death in 1875. Some were able to make a good life
Convict leasing came on the rise. Prisons/states sold prisoners into forced labour e.g. made up 73% of Alabama's state revenue in 1898
Sharecropping limited economic growth. Most lived on substitence farming like tobacco and cotton.-------only 25% of AAS by 1910 owned their land
Government/ president
Move for radical reconstruction by congress/republicans, particularly for civil rights legislation e.g. Civil Rights Bill 1866 (citizenship for all born in USA and federal protection), Freedman's Bureau, and the 14th and 15th amendments (citizenship and vote, 1868 and 1870)
Ended with the compromise of 1877 to satisfy the south, allowing southern state governments to do what they want.
The Compromise of 1877 resolved the disputed 1876 election, where the republicans would win with Rutherford B Hayes, if the democrats regained control of southern state governments. Federal troops were withdrawn from the south.
The Klan Act is passed in 1871, allowing the federal government to intervene with actions of the KKK. Over the following years the Klan largely disappeared, until it's resurgence in the early 1910s with the 'Birth of a Nation' film.
Individuals
Senator Henry W Blair suggested a bill to inject millions into the southern education system, to which congress rejected, one senator even stating this would remove the labouring class.