Attempt At Reconstruction Essay, Research Paper
First and Second Reconstructions
The First and Second Reconstructions held out the great
promise of rectifying racial injustices in America. The First
Reconstruction, emerging out of the chaos of the Civil War had as its
goals equality for Blacks in voting, politics, and use of public
facilities. The Second Reconstruction emerging out of the booming
economy of the 1950’s, had as its goals, integration, the end of Jim
Crow and the more amorphous goal of making America a biracial
democracy where, “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former
slave holders will be able to sit down together at the table of
brotherhood.” Even though both movements, were borne of high hopes
they failed in bringing about their goals. Born in hope, they died in
despair, as both movements saw many of their gains washed away. I
propose to examine why they failed in realizing their goals. My thesis
is that failure to incorporate economic justice for Blacks in both
movements led to the failure of the First and Second Reconstruction.
The First Reconstruction came after the Civil War and lasted
till 1877. The political, social, and economic conditions after the
Civil War defined the goals of the First Reconstruction. At this time
the Congress was divided politically on issues that grew out of the
Civil War: Black equality, rebuilding the South, readmitting Southern
states to Union, and deciding who would control government.1 Socially,
the South was in chaos. Newly emancipated slaves wandered the South
after having left their former masters, and the White population was
spiritually devastated, uneasy about what lay ahead. Economically, the
South was also devastated: plantations lay ruined, railroads torn up,
the system of slave labor in shambles, and cities burnt down. The
economic condition of ex-slaves after the Civil War was just as
uncertain; many had left former masters and roamed the
highways.2
Amid the post Civil War chaos, various political groups were
scrambling to further their agendas. First, Southern Democrats, a
party comprised of leaders of the confederacy and other wealthy
Southern whites, sought to end what they perceived as Northern
domination of the South. They also sought to institute Black Codes, by
limiting the rights of Blacks to move, vote, travel, and change jobs,3
which like slavery, would provide an adequate and cheap labor supply
for plantations. Second, Moderate Republicans wanted to pursue a
policy of reconciliation between North and South, but at the same time
ensure slavery was abolished.4 Third, Radical Republicans, comprised
of Northern politicians, were strongly opposed to slavery,
unsympathetic to the South, wanted to protect newly free slaves, and
keep there majority in Congress.5 The fourth political element, at the
end of the Civil War was President Andrew Johnson whose major goal was
unifying the nation. The fifth element were various fringe groups such
as, abolitionists and Quakers. Strongly motivated by principle and a
belief in equality, they believed that Blacks needed equality in
American society, although they differed on what the nature of that
should be.6
The Northern Radical Republicans, with a majority in Congress,
emerged as the political group that set the goals for Reconstruction
which was to prevent slavery from rising again in the South. At first,
the Radical Republicans thought this could be accomplished by
outlawing slavery with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. But
Southern Democrats in their quest to restore their rule in the South
brought back slavery in all but name, by passing Black Codes as early
as 1865. Both Moderate Republicans and Radical Republicans in Congress
reacted. Joining together in 1866, they passed a bill to extend the
life and responsibilities of the Freedmen’s Bureau to protect newly
freed slaves against the various Black Codes. President Johnson vetoed
the bill, but Radical and Moderate Republicans eventually were able to
pass it.7
The Black Codes and President Johnson’s veto of all
Reconstruction legislation that was unfavorable to the South caused
Moderate and Radical Republicans to change their goals from just
ending slavery to seeking political equality and voting rights
for Blacks.8 The new goals, were based on humanitarian and political
considerations. Northerners had grown increasingly sympathetic to the
plight of the Blacks in the South following numerous well publicized
incidents in which innocent Blacks were harassed, beaten, and killed.9
The extension of suffrage to Black males was a political move by the
Republicans in Congress who believed that Blacks would form the
backbone of the Republican Party in the South, preventing Southern
Democrats from winning elections in Southern states, and uphold the
Republican majority in Congress after the Southern States rejoined the
Union. As one Congressman from the North bluntly put it, “It prevents
the States from going into the hands of the rebels, and giving them
the President and the Congress for the next forty years.”10
Until the 1890’s, this policy of achieving equality through
granting political rights to Blacks worked moderately well. During
Reconstruction, newly freed slaves voted in large numbers in the
South. Of the 1,330,000 people registered to vote under Reconstruction
Acts 703,000 were Black and only 627,000 were White.11 Even after
1877, when federal troops were withdrawn12, Jim Crow laws did not
fully emerge in the South and Blacks continued to vote in high numbers
and hold various state and federal offices. Between 1877 and 1900, a
total of ten Blacks were elected to serve in the US Congress.13 This
occurred because Southern Democrats forged a unlikely coalition with
Black voters against White laborers14. Under this paternalistic order
Southern Democrats agreed to protect Blacks political rights in the
South in return for Black votes15.
But voting and election figures hide the true nature of Black
political power during and after Reconstruction. Few Blacks held
elective offices in relation to their percentage of the South’s
population.16 And those in office usually did not wield the power,
which during Reconstruction continued to reside with Moderate and
Radical Republicans in Congress, whites who ran Southern state
governments, and federal troops. Emancipated slaves had little to do
with either fashioning Reconstruction policy or its implementation.
Blacks political rights were dependent upon alliances made with groups
with conflicting interests White Northern Republicans and White elites
in the South.17 Though they pursued political equality for Blacks,
their goals were shaped more by self-interest than for concern for
Black equality.
By 1905 Blacks lost their right to vote. In Louisiana alone
the number of Black voters fell from 130,334 in 1896 to 1,342
in 1904.18 The number of elected Black public officials dropped to
zero. The disenfranchisement of Blacks was accomplished through good
character tests, poll taxes, White primaries, literacy tests,
grandfather clauses, and intimidation. By 1905, whatever success
politically and socially the Reconstruction had enjoyed had been wiped
out.19 Following on the heels of disenfranchisement came
implementation of comprehensive Jim Crow laws segregating steamboats,
toilets, ticket windows and myriad of other previously non-segregated
public places. 20
Two historians, C. Van Woodward and William Julius Wilson,
both pin point specific events such as, recessions, class conflicts,
imperialist expansion to explain the rise of Jim Crow. Wilson’s21 and
Woodward’s22 analysis is lacking because the United States has
undergone many recessions and many times minority groups such as Jews,
Irish, and Eastern Europeans and have been blamed for taking away the
jobs of the lower-class; and yet these groups have not had their votes
stripped away from them and did not have an elaborate set of laws
constructed to keep them segregated in society as Blacks have. The
only community of people in the Untied States who have been victims of
systematic, long-term, violent, White Supremacy have been Native
Americans. And Native Americans, like Afro-Americans, have been
predominately powerless economically and politically. This points to
the conclusion that the systemic demise of the First Reconstruction
stems from the failure of Reconstruction leaders to include economic
justice for Blacks as a goal; thus dooming the Reconstruction movement
from the outset. The failure of pursuing a policy of economic
redistribution forced Blacks into fragile political alliances that
quickly disintegrated (as can be seen in 1877 and 1896); Blacks were
forced to rely on the Radical Republicans and Federal troops to
give them their rights and later their former slave masters, the
Southern Democrats, to safeguard their rights.23 The disintegration of
these agreements were caused directly by the events that Woodward and
Wilson point to, but these political agreements were inherently
fragile and would have inevitably unraveled because of their very
nature. These political alliances had conflicting interests. The poor
sharecropper and the White elites of the South were inherently
unequal. The former slaves were looked on not as equals, but as
inferior.24 Whatever well meaning reforms were instituted were done so
paternalistically and for Southern Democrats own interests. And when
an alliance with Blacks no longer served the interests of the whites
they were easily abandoned. When the Blacks agreement with the
Southern Democrats unraveled Blacks were left economically naked
except for the loin cloth of political rights. But this loin cloth was
easily stripped from them, because lacking economic power, they were
unable to make other political allies, their economic position allowed
them to be easily intimidated by White land owners, they had no way to
lobby the government, no way to leave the South, few employment
opportunities, and for many Blacks no education.25 The leaders of the
Reconstruction failed to underezd that without economic justice
Blacks would be forced into a dependency on the White power structure
to protect their rights and when these rights no longer served
the interests of this power structure they were easily stripped away.
Reconstruction Acts and Constitutional Amendments offered little
protection to stop this stripping away of Black political rights.
The Reconstruction leaders failed to underezd the
relationship between political rights and economic power, if they had
they might not have rejected measures that could have provided former
slaves with the economic power to safeguard their political rights.
Two possibilities presented themselves at the outset of the First
Reconstruction. A Quaker and Radical Republican Congressman from
Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Stevens, proposed that the North seize the land
holdings of the South’s richest land owners as a war indemnity and
redistribute the land giving each newly freed Negro adult male a mule
and forty acres.26 Thaddeus Stevens a bitter foe of the South,27
explained that a free society had to be based on land redistribution:
Southern Society has more the features of aristocracy then a
democracy….. It is impossible that any practical equality of
rights can exist where a few thousand men monopolize the who
landed property. How can Republican institutions, free schools,
free churches, free social intercourse exist in a mingled
community of nabobs and serfs, of owners of twenty-thousand-acre
manors, with lordly palaces, and the occupants of narrow huts
inhabited by low White trash?
Stevens plan in the Republican Press though drew unfavorable
responses. The plan was called brash and unfair. Only one newspaper
endorsed it and that was the French paper La Temps which said, “There
cannot be real emancipation for men who do no possess at least a small
portion of soil.”28 When the bill was introduced in Congress it was
resoundingly defeated by a majority of Republicans. Stevens was alone
in underezding the tremendous institutional changes that would have
to take place to guarantee the emancipation of a people. If the former
slave did not have his own land he would be turned into a serf in
his own nation a stranger to the freedoms guaranteed to him and a
slave all but in name.
The other alternative the leaders of Reconstruction had was
expanding the Freedmen’s Bureau from a temporary to a permanent
institution that educated all former slaves and ensured that former
slaves had a viable economic base that did not exploit them. Instead,
the Freedmen’s Bureau lasted merely five years, and only five million
dollars were appropriated to it. Its mission to educate and protect
the Freedmen was meet in only a small way in this short amount of time
and when the Freedmen’s Bureau shutdown it left the education of
former slaves to local governments which allocated limited if any
funds.29 Although proposed by a few Republicans the Freedmen’s Bureau
also refused to set a minimum wage in the South to ensure that former
slaves received a fair wage from their former slave masters. Instead,
the Freedmen’s Bureau was instrumental in spearheading the formation
of sharecropping by encouraging both former slaves and plantation
owners to enter into sharecropping agreements.30 By the time the
Bureau ceased operations in 1870, the sharecropping system was the
dominant arrangement in the South. This arrangement continued the
poverty and oppression of Blacks in the South. As one Southern
governor said about sharecropping, “The Negro skins the land and the
landlord skins the Negro.”31 The Freedmen’s Bureau missed a great
opportunity; had its mission been broadened, its funding increased,
and its power been extended, it could have educated the Black
population and guaranteed some type of land reform in the South.
Because neither Thaddeus Stevens plan for land redistribution or an
expansion of the Freedmen’s Bureau took place, Blacks were left after
slavery much as they were before, landless and uneducated. In the
absence of an economic base for Blacks, three forces moved in during
the 1890’s wiping out the political successes of Reconstruction: the
white sheets of White supremacy, the blue suits of politicians all too
eager to unify whites with racism, and the black robes of the
judiciary in cases like Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 stripped away
Blacks’ social and political rights.
The Civil Rights movement came nearly ninety years after the
First Reconstruction. The goals of the Second Reconstruction involved
at first tearing down the legal Jim Crow of the South, but by the
March on Washington in 1964 the goals had changed to guaranteeing all
Americans equality of opportunity, integration both social and
political, and the more amorphous goal of a biracial democracy.32 But
the goals did not include the need to transform the economic condition
of Blacks. Instead they emphasized the need to transform the political
and social condition of Blacks.33
At the beginning, the Civil Rights Movement sought solutions
to racial injustice through laws and used the Federal courtsto secure
them. The Supreme Court set the stage in 1954 with Brown vs. The Board
of Education of Topeka Kansas: the Brown decision focused the
attention of dominant Black institutions such as CORE (Congress On
Racial Equality) and the NAACP (National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People) on fighting the illegality of
segregation in Congress and courts. Subsequent organizations that came
to play larger roles in the Civil Rights Movement such as, SNCC
(Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee) and SCLC (Southern
Christian Leadership Council) fell into this same pattern–
combating mainly legal segregation. Although they pioneered different
tactics– sit-ins, boycotts, and marches, the goal was to focus
attention on getting rid of Jim Crow.34
The Civil Rights movement, successfully pressured Congress and
the President to enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting
Rights Act. The Civil Rights Movement also brought about a fundamental
shift in public opinion; de jure racial discrimination became a moral
wrong for many Americans. The Civil Rights Movement by 1965 had broken
the back of legal Jim Crow in the South. However, in the North, Blacks
living under de facto segregation by economic and racist conditions.
Segregated schools and housing were unaffected by the progress of the
Civil Rights Movement.35 By the middle of 1965, the Civil Rights
Movement had stalled; never recovering its momentum.36
C. Van Woodward views the failure of the Civil Rights Movement
to realize its goals and its disintegration in the same myopic way he
views the failure of the First Reconstruction. He points to three
different events, from 1965 to 1968, to explain the disintegration of
the Civil Rights Movement: riots in urban areas which created a White
backlash37, the rise of racial separatism and extremism within the
Civil Rights Movement and Black community, 38 and the Vietnam War
which diverted White liberals’ attention. Woodward’s analysis fails to
provide a broad perspective of why these events destroyed such a
strong movement. There had been riots in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963,
yet these riots neither spread nor crippled the movement.39 Black
separatism had been a vocal movement before 1965 in the form of the
Nation of Islam.40 And mass opposition to the Vietnam War among White
liberals did not pickup momentum until the late 1960’s after the Civil
Rights Movement had stalled.
On the other hand, William Julius Wilson provides a more
coherent explanation of the demise of the Civil Rights Movement.
Wilson says the movement failed because it did not effectively address
the economic plight of inner city Blacks living in the North. This
failure was caused by the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement
which had little connection with Blacks in the ghetto. The leaders of
the movement were from the Southern middle-class Blacks; who were
either college students, teachers, preachers, or lawyers.41 Like the
leaders of the First Reconstruction, the leaders of the Civil Rights
Movement lacked underezding of the economic needs of the Black
lower-class. Instead of addressing the economic plight of Northern
Black ghettoes, the Civil Rights Movement continued to push for broad
political and civil rights. Inhabitants of Northern Ghettoes, were
trapped not by Jim Crow, but by poverty and de facto segregation.
Nonviolent protests, marches, pickets, and rallies did nothing to
change poor housing, lack of employment, and inferior schools.
However, the Civil Rights Movement’s battles to end Jim Crow
in the South and obtain passage of Civil Rights acts in the 1960’s
raised awareness of lower-class Blacks in the ghetto to racism and
increased their impatience with police brutality and economic
injustice. This heightened awareness of racism in their community and
desperation over their plight, turned poor urban Blacks into matches
and ghettoes into kindling. The Riots from 1965 to 1968 became a way
to raise economic issues the Civil Rights Movement had ignored. The
Riots were caused, not just by desperation, they had been desperate
for years, not just by a heightened awareness of racism, they had been
aware of it before 1965, but because they found no answers to
their plight. Neither White politicians nor civil rights leaders had
solutions for their economic needs.42
Wilson’s analysis thus far provides as answer for the riots
and subsequent White backlash. However, Wilson’s explanation of the
emergence and appeal of Black Power is lacking. Wilson says Black
Power’s emergence was caused by riots in the summers from 1965 to
1968. But these riots occurred after Black Power had emerged inside
the Civil Rights Movement. In the spring of 1965 the leadership of
SNCC and CORE had expelled its White members, rejected integration as
a goal, and elected black separatists as presidents.43 Instead, I see
the emergence of the Black Power Movement as related to the failure of
the Civil Rights Movement to address lower-class frustration with
economic injustice, and de facto racism in the North. Black Power, as
a movement, had many facets and leaders. Black Power leaders were from
the lower-class while the Civil Rights Movements leaders were from the
middle-class. Stokely Carmichael, a poor immigrant from Trinidad;
Eldridge Cleaver, the son of a Texas carpenter, and went to jail for
rape44; Huey Newton, before becoming a political leader, was a
hustler. Other leaders such as Angela Davis gravitated to the movement
because of its mix of Marxist and nationalist economic politics.45 The
rise of these leaders was a result of the Civil Rights Movement’s
failure before 1965, to articulate a program of racial justice for
poor Blacks in the North; in this absence violent, vocal and angry
leaders emerged to fill this void. Leaders such as H. Rap Brown called
for “killing the honkies,” James Brown called for Black pride with his
song “Say It Loud- I’m Black and I’m Proud.”
Black Power provided poor Blacks with psychological and
economic solutions to their problems. Psychologically it brought about
a shift in Black consciousness a shift that made being Black
beautiful, no longer as W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1905 were Blacks a
“Seventh Son.” But equally important the Black Power Movement tried to
provide economic answers to urban Blacks with answers such as: racial
separatism, moving back to Africa, taking over the government, and
taking “what was theirs” from whites. Although these solutions
ultimately proved unworkable for solving economic problems, they
tried, while the Civil Rights movement did not attempt solutions.
The failure of the Civil Rights Movement in articulating and
pursuing a plan of economic justice for lower-class Blacks doomed the
movement’s goal of integration, furthering de facto segregation in
housing and schools. The end of Jim Crow did not end the income
difference between Whites and Blacks. In 1954, Blacks earned
approximately 53% of what whites earned, and in 1980 they earned 57%
what an average White earns. At this rate racial equality in average
income would come in 250 years.46 This racial inequality in income
left unaddressed by the Civil Rights Movement, forces poor Blacks to
remain in deteriorating slums in cities, while whites flee to the
suburbs. The de facto segregation that has emerged has shifted the
good jobs to suburbs and relegated lower-class Blacks in cities to
diminishing job prospects. This has caused rising rates of
unemployment, economic desperation, and jobs predominantly in the
low-wage sector. This poverty cycle among lower-class Blacks remains
after vestiges of legal Jim Crow have disappeared.47 White flight to
suburbs and the poverty trap of the inner city for Blacks has been so
great that in 1980 the number of segregated schools surpassed the
number of segregated schools before 1954.48
Both the First and Second Reconstructions left Blacks with no
economic base, dependent on others for their social and political
power. And as in the First Reconstruction, when those political
alliances did not serve the needs of the whites in power, Blacks were
abandoned and their political and social goals wiped out. In the
1990’s most political leaders have long given up on the plight of the
Black urban poor. Mandatory busing is fast being eliminated in major
cities, and Black leaders cry out for help to a President and Congress
more interested in balancing the budget, cutting welfare costs, and
spending on the military then dealing with the complicated cycle of
urban poverty.
Though, the two Reconstructions held out great promise and
hope to Blacks in America, both failed to achieve their broad goals
and in subsequent decades much of their accomplishments washed away.
Yet, both brought significant permanent changes. The First
Reconstruction ended slavery and the second ended legal segregation.
But just as the First Reconstruction disintegrated by the 1890’s
because of the failure of the federal government to create a viable
economic base for freed slaves, the Second Reconstruction did not
result in a fully integrated society because it too failed to
fundamentally change the economic condition of poor Blacks.
The Black experience in America is a contradiction for there
is no one black experience just as there is no one white experience.
In the same way, the failure of the First and Second Reconstructions
was caused not by one event but by many. The failings of these
Reconstructions are not as simple as racism, politics, or individual
events; to single out one to explain such complicated periods gives an
incomplete picture of both history and the nature of racism. The
leaders of both the First and Second Reconstructions fell into this
trap and sought to solve racial inequality through political means.
Their failure to see the economic dimensions of racism was key to the
demise of the First and Second Reconstructions. While far from the
movements only failing it is a factor that has been ignored by
historians such as C. Vann Woodward and William Julius Wilson. America
still has a long way to go to reach a place where “little Black boys
and Black girls will be able to join hands with little White boys and
White girls as sisters and brothers.” We are still a divided society-
economically if not legally. We are divided between the inner city
ghettoes of South Central LA and the mansions of Beverly Hills;
between Harlem’s abandoned buildings and the plush apartments of Park
Avenue. Racial injustice will never be solved with mere politics and
laws, anger and separatism. If we fail to bridge this divide the
question of the Twenty-First century like the Twentieth will be that
of the color line.
–
Endnotes
1 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New
York: Harper and Row, 1988) p.228.
2 Ibid. pp.124-125.
3 Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy
and Black Americans (London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) p. 148.
4 Ibid. p. 152.
5 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New
York: Harper and Row, 1988) pp.229-231.
6 Daniel J. Mcinerney, The Fortunate Heirs of Freedom: Abolition and
the Republican Party (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994)
p.151.
7 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New
York: Harper and Row, 1988) pp.228-251.
8 The transformation of the goals of Reconstruction was caused by
Johnson’s veto of nearly every Reconstruction bill. This
forced Moderates to join the Radical Republicans in an alliance
against President Johnson. Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner,
Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London:
Transaction Publishers, 1993) p.153.
9 Ibid. p.159.
10 Ibid. p. 161.
11 A total of twenty-two Blacks served in the House of Representatives
during Reconstruction. C. Eric Lincoln, The Negro Pilgrimage in
America (New York: Bantam, 1967) p.65.
12 In the Presidential election of 1876, the Democrat Samuel J.
Tilden, captured a majority of the popular vote and lead in the
electoral college results. But the electoral votes of three Southern
States still under Republican rule were in doubt, as Ginzberg writes,
“In all three states the Republicans controlled the returning boards
which had to certify the election results, and in all three states
they certified their own parties ticket. As the history books reveal,
the crisis was finally overcome when the Southern Democrats agreed to
support the Republican Candidate Rutherford B. Hayes, as a part of a
larger compromise (The Compromise of 1877). Hayes promised in return
to withdraw Federal troops from the South.” Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S.
Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London:
Transaction Publishers, 1993) pp. 182-183.
13 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974) p. 54.
14 Southern Democrats were comprised of Southern elites and formed a
coalition with Blacks to prevent poor Whites from passing economic
initiatives such as free silver, the break up of monopolies, and labor
laws. Gerald Gaither, Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and
Bigotry In the New South (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1972)
p.299.
15 The Coalition between poor Whites was based on a paternalistic
order as C. Vann Woodward explains, “Blacks continued to vote in large
numbers and hold minor offices and a few seats in Congress, but this
could be turned to account by the Southern White Democrats who had
trouble with White lower-class rebellion.” C. Vann Woodward, Origins
of a New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951)
p.254.
16 Howard N. Robinowitz, Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction
Era ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) p.396.
17 Ibid. p.398.
18 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974) p. 85.
19 William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980) p.63.
20 Until 1900, the only type of Jim Crow law (a law which legally
segregates races) prevalent in the South was one applying to
passengers aboard trains in the first class section. C. Vann Woodward,
The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press,
1974) p. 67.
339