Social Reconstruction

Race in the Antebellum South

Race has been attached historically and primarily to one attribute: color - and the relationship between "race" and "status" has a long history. While the concept of "Race" is a social construct (made up by people, and not based on science) racial ideas were useful in the structuring of society in the 19th century to keep African Americans as slaves in Antebellum (pre-war) South and American Indians off valuable land everywhere. Thus, the recognition of race gave whites power - and this racial thought was ingrained within the American psyche after centuries of the assumptions that whites were superior. The idea that this was true neglected the fact that lack of good education, employment, accumulation of wealth, and healthcare, became roadblocks for lower classes in order to climb the social, political, and economic ladder. These issues still exist in some forms today.

Race Post-Civil War

In the post-Civil War era, racial ideas, especially in the South, became even more pervasive as Southern whites sought to re assume control during and after the Reconstruction period. We see this through competing ideological racial notions on the part of whites; through the pervasiveness of violence (lynchings and race rioting); and its institutionalization through legislation and American culture (through literature, movies, and advertising). Both the actions of whites and the responses by African Americans in the post-Civil War years would come to shape race relations in America for well over half a century.

After the Civil War, the beaten South sought to cope with the severe social dislocation caused by the war and emancipation. The abolition of slavery had robbed the South of its chief means of structuring Southern society through a hierarchical racial order. Despite class differences among whites, there was racial unity in which even the poorest whites could still feel themselves a step above the lowest rung on the hierarchy. Thus, putting race in a hierarchical order was not simply to keep African Americans down, but to keep poor whites from directing their discontent at the upper-classes. In other words, whites would have someone to look down on no matter how bad their own social or economic position might be. But the very social system of the South was subverted by emancipation and Reconstruction, and social institutions that had governed the South were no longer relevant. Thus Southern Whites, upon retaking control of their state governments after the withdrawal of Union troops in 1877, sought to rebuild that racial hierarchy in a post-slavery south that would once again reassert white supremacy.

The Black Codes

Despite the efforts of Radical Republicans in Congress, the white elite in the South did everything it could to prevent African Americans from gaining civic (political) power. In reaction to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, every southern legislature passed laws to restrict opportunities for African Americans. These black codes, which ranged widely in severity, outlawed everything from interracial marriage to loitering in public areas. One code outlawed unemployment, which allowed white landowners to threaten their tenant farmers with eviction if they decided to give up their land. The black codes in Mississippi were arguably the worst: they stripped African Americans of their right to serve on juries and testify against whites, and also outlawed free speech. Other codes forced black children into unpaid apprenticeships that usually led to fieldwork.

Southern whites passed these laws because they feared black political influence, especially in states like South Carolina where African Americans outnumbered whites. Many racist white southerners also worried that freed slaves would seek revenge on their masters, rape white women, and ruin the economy. Wealthy southern landowners, for their part, supported the black codes because the codes ensured that they would have a stable and reliable black workforce. Some of the black codes forced former slaves to sign contracts, requiring them to work for meager wages, while some even required them to work on chain gangs in the fields.

Once the Republican Party took control of Reconstruction, they forced southern state legislatures to repeal many of the black codes. Nonetheless, many wealthy white southerners continued to enforce the codes unlawfully for years, even decades, after Reconstruction.

The Ku Klux Klan

Despite the progress African Americans made in the South after the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, racism still existed, and angry whites sometimes resorted to violence to intimidate African Americans. The most notorious of these initiatives was the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society of white supremacists using the social hierarchy to terrorize African Americans, catholics, Jews, and anyone who was not a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant). Klansmen, who wore white hoods to conceal their identities, harassed and beat African Americans, carpetbaggers (Northern Whites), and scalawags (Whites & African Americans), and sometimes even conducted lynchings—mob killings, usually by hanging.

The Klan often used these tactics to scare African Americans away from the polls during elections and to punish those who did not obey their demands. In one extreme case, Klansmen murdered several hundred African American voters in Louisiana in 1868. Congress, realizing the need to protect African Americans, passed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 to try to curb the tide of violence and intimidation.

Klan activities threatened to undermine federal reconstruction efforts in the former Confederacy. Therefore, Republican governors and officials appealed to President Grant for help if local and state authorities were unable or unwilling.President Grant looked at the violence with increasing concern. He had a genuine regard for the well-being of the freedpeople who had supported the Union in large numbers and was concerned that the actions of the Ku Klux Klan were undermining the verdict of the Civil War.

Congress responded with three “Force Acts” aimed at stopping the violence, especially within the Ku Klux Klan. The Enforcement Act of May 1870 prohibited “banding together” or “going in disguise upon the public highways or upon the premises of another” to violate a citizen’s constitutional rights. As the Klan was known for their disguises, this act called put them on notice. The Second Force Act of February 1871 put federal elections under federal supervision mainly by federal judges and U.S. Marshals. Finally, the Third Force Act of April of 1871 empowered President Grant to suspend Habeas Corpus and use the military to enforce these acts. The latter two Force Acts were also known as the “Ku Klux Klan Acts.”

Grant tried to appeal to the people of the South. “I do particularly exhort the people of those parts of the country to suppress all such combinations [lawlessness] by their own voluntary efforts,” Grant remarked, “and to maintain the rights of all citizens of the United States and to secure to all such citizens the equal protection of the laws.” Continuing, the President warned that “I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive, whenever and wherever it shall become necessary to do so for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws.”

Due to limited federal resources, Grant decided to make an example of several counties in the piedmont region of South Carolina, where some of the worst violence and lawlessness was taking place. After the Klan in that area failed to heed Grant’s warning, he utilized the Third Force Act. President Grant suspended habeas corpus (the right of a detained person to request help from a court to determine if their imprisonment is lawful) and declared martial law in nine mostly upstate South Carolina counties. Detachments of the 7th U.S. Cavalry were stationed in the area and worked to gather information and intelligence on local Klan activities. The military and US. Marshals then rounded up suspected Klan members for trial. The military then worked with the Department of Justice and Grant’s Attorney General, Amos Akerman, to prosecute KKK members suspected of engaging in terroristic violence. The Department of Justice had recently been established under the Attorney General's authority after President Grant asked Congress to pass a law establishing the office, which was done on June 22, 1870. The Justice Department aimed to protect the rights of newly-freed African Americans and serve as the federal government's enforcement mechanism for the various laws described above.

These efforts had mixed success. During the period of martial law, many Klan members went into hiding or fled. Federal resources were thin and Grant’s political adversaries—both North and South—railed against the alleged overreach of federal power as a violation of federalism. Issues of state and federal jurisdiction were often argued more vigorously than the seriousness of the crime itself. Akerman resigned as Attorney General in the end of 1871, ending the federal government’s most vigorous period of enforcement. Many convicted KKK members were given light sentences. Later, the increasing takeover by the Democrats of state and local governments made the Klan less relevant because White supremacists gained control of the laws in the South. But Grant’s decisive action temporarily reestablished law and order in the South allowing African Americans and those who supported them some relief from the horrific violence surrounding their communities.

Social Segregation

As radical racism came to be the dominant mentality in the South at the turn of the century, it became institutionalized in three ways:

Disenfranchisement: African Americans would be prevented from voting through legal means (poll taxes, literacy tests) or intimidation.
Segregation (aka Jim Crow Laws): African Americans and whites would be separated in all public accommodations such as schools, hotels, trains and streetcars, restaurants, and even cemeteries in an effort to underscore the inferiority of African Americans. In other words, separate facilities would serve as a constant reminder to African Americans that they were unequal to whites.
Social Mobility: As the South began to build industries, whites made it clear that industrialization would not include African Americans who were forced into low wage rural and domestic work. Permanent underemployment would reinforce economic subordination.

Both African Americans and whites were expected to uphold a racial etiquette intended to enforce this racism. While whites were expected to display their superiority, an African American was always to give-way on the side-walk, always give a title of respect to whites, never expect the same respect in return, and never resist. There was, in essence, no protection from the legal system should this etiquette be violated.