Voting And Civil Rights Of Former Slaves example essay topic

Many Whites in the South owned slaves. A slave owner would give "good whippings" to the slaves, if their slaves didn't behave and to coerce them into productive labor. The South was split in two, the Upper South and the Lower South. In the 1850's the Lower South was made up of: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. Cotton production and slavery went hand in hand in the Lower south. Slavery was very profitable for the plantation owners.

Between 1815 and 1860 the price of a male field hand nearly tripled. Slaves were used for cheap labor, so the masters would be able to keep most of the profit. The Upper South consisted of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. In these states, slavery was present but wasn't as popular as in the lower "cotton" South.

This was because the growing season was shorter and the land was less fertile. In the upper south the land value went down when the whites moved west looking for better land. Although the soil exhaustion and wasteful farming in the upper south persisted, the agriculture had revived by the 1850's. Slavery was weakening by the 1850's in the Upper South.

There were about 4 million slaves in the South by 1860. Each state had slave codes of its own. These were laws defining the status of slaves and the rights of the owners. Since slaves were referred to as property and not people, these codes gave the masters near-absolute power over their human property.

Slaves, in most states, were not allowed to read or write due to these codes. They also weren't allowed to own property, make contracts, posses alcohol or guns, legally marry (except in Louisiana), leave the plantations or testify against whites in court. Slaves tried to resist slavery but many times failed. In Gabriel Prosser's Rebellion and Denmark Vesey's Conspiracy the slaves were defeated before the rebellion got under way. About one thousand slaves per year escaped permanently because of the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a secret network of safe houses set up by Quakers and antislavery Blacks and Whites.

Black codes found in the North as well, denied blacks nearly all the rights of citizenship. A few Southern Blacks (about 6% in 1860) were "free persons of color". They needed freedom papers to prove they were free because all Blacks were thought of as slaves. While the spread of plantation agriculture in the Lower South after 1830 and the involvement of southern Whites in cotton and slavery deepened, an abolitionist movement in the North was underway. Attacking slavery morally and demanding it to be abolished, abolitionists were distinguished by their insistence that slavery was the greatest national sin. Female abolitionists took the lead in organizing a separate women's rights movement.

In 1817, antislavery reformers from the North and South founded the American Colonization Society. They wanted to remove all Blacks from America and send them back to Africa. This would never have worked because slaveholders benefited too much to remove blacks. Feminism grew out of abolition because of the parallel many women drew between the exploited lives of the slaves and their own subordinated status in northern society. Antislavery women now demanded an equal voice in the abolitionist movement. Women began to rebel just like slaves and demand equality.

The unsatisfying compromise of 1850, the various misadventures in the Caribbean and Central America, the controversies over Kansas and the Dread Scott case and abolitionist John Brown's failed attempt to spark a slave revolt in 1859, drove a wedge between the North and South. The South's defense of slavery and the North's attack on it fostered an array of stereotypes that exaggerated the real differences between the sections. The events following Abraham Lincoln's election to president demonstrated how wildly mistaken were those who dismissed Southern threats of succession. Representatives from the seven seceding states met to form a separate country known as the Confederate States of America. In Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, the first Confederate shell whistled down on the fort. This was a deceptive beginning to a very bloody war because in this first battle between the Union and the Confederacy, there were no casualties.

The Civil War was under way. The Civil War stimulated other changes that grew more significant over time. It taught the effectiveness of centralized management, new financial techniques and the coordination of production, marketing and distribution. A period of reconstruction began after the Civil War. Reconstruction dealt with the position of African Americans in American Society and under what terms to readmit the former Confederate States back into the United States of America. Freedmen's Bureau was a multipurpose agency that provided social, educational and economic services, advice and protection to former slaves and destitute whites.

The bureau's greatest success was in education. Because of this great success, former slave illiteracy rate was reduced to below 70%. Some Blacks even went to college. Although Blacks were now free and they had the freedom of moving into cities, they faced the immediate problems of finding a place to live and securing a job. The effort by African Americans to test their freedom was inspired by religious faith.

After the Civil War, there was no set plan in reconstituting the Union. The Ten Percent Plan was proposed by Lincoln to readmit a seceding state if 10% of its prewar voters took an oath to the Union. This plan also prohibited slavery in a new state constitution but did not require states to grant equal and civil and political rights to former slaves. When Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson had the responsibility for developing a reconstruction policy.

Many approved this plan even though it said nothing about the voting and civil rights of former slaves. The updated Black codes allowed local officials to arrest Blacks who had no documented employment and residence or who were "disorderly". These new codes also restricted Blacks to certain occupations, barred them from jury duty and forbade them to possess guns. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in June 1866 which granted every citizen equality before the law.

It prohibited states from violating the civil rights of their citizens, thus outlawing Black codes and gave states the choice of enfranchising blacks or losing representation in Congress. In this amendment it was made clear that only males could vote. Susan B. Anthony formed the American Equal rights Association in 1866 to push for woman suffrage at state level. This had little impact.

Although Black codes diminished, violence against Blacks increased. In March 1867 a period of Congressional or Radical Reconstruction was inaugurated. There were three reconstruction acts fulfilled. They were 1. Secured the freemen's right to vote. 2.

Ensured the likelihood of Southern States being run by Republican regimes that would enforce new constitutions, protect former slaves' rights and maintain republican majority in congress. 3. Set standards for readmission that required the South to accept the consequences of defeat: the preeminence of the federal government and the end of involuntary servitude. Racial violence preceded Republican rule.

In the cities where blacks and whites competed for jobs and where black political influence was most visible had become flashpoints for interracial violence. White paramilitary groups flourished in the South and were responsible for much of the violence directed against African Americans. The best known group was the Klux Klux Klan. In 1866 six confederate veterans founded the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee. The only thing Black and White southerners had in common was wanting to be left alone. The Blacks wanted to be left alone by the Whites, and the Whites wanted to be left alone by the federal government.

A chance to redeem the sacrifice of a bloody civil war with a society that fulfilled the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for all citizens slipped away. It would take a new generation of Blacks a long century later to revive it. Southern White lawmakers sought to cement white solidarity and ensure Black subservience by the 1890's by instituting segregation by law and the disenfranchisement of black voters. When urbanization, industrial development and railroads increased the opportunities for racial contact and muddled the rules of racial interaction, states began to legislate segregation in the 1890's. These segregation statutes came to be known collectively as Jim Crowe Laws. Under these laws, there were separate facilities for Blacks including public conveyances, theaters, hotels, restaurants, parks and schools.

Economic segregation followed social segregation. Before the Civil War Black men had dominated crafts such as carpentry and masonry. Now, Whites were replacing them in these trades and excluding them from new trades such as plumbing and electrical work. The 15th Amendment, which granted free men the right to vote, was an obstacle for the Whites.

Whites did many things to get around blacks having equality but making sure not to violate the letter of the 15 Amendment. They had poll taxes, which required citizens to pay to vote. They adopted a secret ballot, which confused and intimidated illiterate Blacks because they were used to having colored ballots to identify parties. They also set literacy and education qualifications for voting or required prospective registrants to "interpret" a section of the states constitution. To avoid poor illiterate Whites from not being able to vote, there was the "grandfather clause" which allowed one to vote if one's grandfather voted. The South got away with segregating, disenfranchising and lynching African Americans because the majority of Americans in the 1890's subscribed to the notion that Blacks were inferior to Whites and deserved to be treated as second class citizens.

The North didn't threaten to deny Blacks the right to vote, but they did increase segregation. Their booming industries didn't hire Blacks and Anti discrimination laws on the books since the Civil War went unenforced. More than a dozen boycotts of streetcar systems in the urban south were organized by African Americans to desegregate them, but none succeeded. W.E.B. Du Bois challenged the acceptance of Black social inequality. He was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard. Du Bois was the cofounder, in 1910 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This was an interracial organization dedicated to restoring African American political and social rights.

One million Black men and women served in the armed forces. Their experiences during World War II laid the foundation for the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950's and 1960's. After World War II, nearly a million Black southerners migrated to northern cities. There was still racial discrimination in the North, but there were greater economic opportunities and political freedom. The north continued to attract rural African Americans after the war. In New York City, Chicago and Detroit, White and Black workers learned the power of biracial unity in fighting for better wages and working conditions.

In July 1948 the President made his boldest move on behalf of civil rights issuing an executive order barring segregation in the armed forces. In the post war south, the racial situation remained largely unchanged even though it was still home to over half of the nation's 15 million African Americans. Martin Luther King was a strong leader who laid out six key lessons from the yearlong struggle after celebrating the Montgomery boycott victory. They were 1. We can stick together for a common cause; 2. Our leaders do not have to sellout; 3.

Threats and violence do not necessarily intimidate those who are sufficiently aroused and nonviolent; 4. Our Church is becoming militant, stressing a social gospel as well as a gospel of personal salvation; 5. We have gained a new sense of dignity and destiny; 6. We have discovered a new and powerful weapon-nonviolence. On June 11, 1963 President John F. Kennedy went on national television and offered his personal endorsement of the civil right activism. He told his audience that America wouldn't be fully free until all it's citizens were free.

The next week, Kennedy asked congress for a broad law that would ensure voting rights, outlaw segregation in public facilities and bolster federal authority to deny funds for programs that discriminated. Movement leaders lauded the president's initiative, but they understood that racial hatred would still haunt the nation. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 and this threw an ominous cloud over the whole nation and the civil rights movement in particular. Although never a friend of civil rights, Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's successor, reassured the nation that the ideas and ideals, which Kennedy so nobly represented, must and will be translated into effective action. Even so, civil rights activists looked upon Johnson warily as he took over the oval office.

On July 2, 1964 Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This landmark law represented the most significant civil rights legislation since reconstruction. It prohibited discrimination in most public places, outlawed discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, outlawed bias in federally assisted programs, authorized the justice department to institute suits to desegregate public schools and other facilities, created the equal employment opportunity commission, and provided technical and financial aid to communities to desegregate their schools. In the contemporary world, there are discrepancies, sometimes vast discrepancies in wealth, material possessions, power and authority, prestige, access to simple comforts and the way people are treated and perceived that make inequality evident. Social stratification focuses on the societal content of inequality. This divides the society into a hierarchy of levels or layers of individuals and families in which the distribution of rewards is linked to position.

Class, race, ethnicity and gender are sometimes approached as distinct and separate social categories and source of inequality today. A class is a group of individuals or families who occupy a similar position in the economic system of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in an industrial society. A race is defined as a group of people who are generally considered to be physically distinct in some way such as skin color, hair texture or facial features from other groups and are considered by themselves and others to be a distinct group. An ethnic group is a group of people who are generally recognized by themselves and others as a distinct group with recognition based on cultural characteristics such as nationality, language and religion. Gender is one's sex - male or female. A majority group is a group that is dominant in society.

A minority group is any group that is assigned an inferior status in society. Race or ethnicity frequently determines majorities and minorities. It is possible for a group to be a numerical majority but still be the minority. Majority is best known as dominant and minority as the subordinate group. Racism is any attitude, belief, behavior or institutional arrangement that favors one race or ethnic group over another.

Racial prejudice refers to people's thinking their attitudes and beliefs that tend to favor one group over another or to cause unequal treatment on the basis of race. Racial ideology is the belief that some races are biologically, intellectually or culturally inferior to others. Racism, prejudice and all discrimination has been present in American society throughout its history..