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 blacks 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 blacks 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 blacks 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 blacks from gaining civic power. In reaction to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, every southern legislature passed laws to restrict opportunities for blacks. 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 blacks 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 blacks 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 blacks made in the South after the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, racism still existed, and angry whites sometimes resorted to violence to intimidate blacks. The most notorious of these initiatives was the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society of white supremacists formed in Tennessee in 1866 to terrorize blacks. Klansmen, who wore white hoods to conceal their identities, harassed and beat blacks, carpetbaggers, and scalawags, and sometimes even conducted lynchings—mob killings of blacks, usually by hanging.

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

Radical Violence

As radical racism grew more prevalent in white thinking, white violence against blacks became more frequent. Racial violence took a number of forms. There was an epidemic of race riots, particularly in the 1890s, in New Orleans, Atlanta, and Wilmington. The Ku-Klux-Klan was especially bold, torturing and murdering hundreds of blacks during and after Reconstruction.

But lynchings were the most common act of violence against blacks - and though they were mostly in the South, even the North suffered from a rash of white vigilante violence such as in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

"For the sake of Coatesville it is well to say right here that the entire tragic scene, the shooting, the lynching and all the details thereto took place in East Fallowfield township outside the borders of the borough."

There was a public and ritual character to lynchings. Rarely were they private and small scale affairs. They took the form of public spectacles. They were often advertised and had high attendance. The Coatesville Record continues:

"Everything was quiet and orderly around the fire if such a thing can be said of a lynching. There was no loud talking, no profanity, and the utmost deference shown to hundreds of women who came to the scene. Men stepped back as the women came forward and led them to points of vantage where they could obtain the best view of the burning Negro."

Lynchings took place because of criminal accusation, or intimidation of blacks who were voting, or because someone was improving himself economically. The allegation of rape was alleged in half the cases. Lynchings reached epidemic proportions in the 1890s as there were about 138 lynchings nationwide per year. Between 1889 and 1941, an estimated 3,811 lynchings took place in America. NEVER was a federal anti-lynching bill successfully passed in Congress as Southern Congressman argued that lynchings were a necessity to protect the white women of the South.

Walker's murder was investigated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which called for an end to lynching nationwide.[4] Pennsylvania passed a state anti-lynching law in 1923. But, even after passage of an anti-lynching House bill in the 1920s, no federal law was passed because of the power of the Democratic southern bloc in the Senate. At that time, it represented only white southerners; African Americans had been disfranchised in the South since the turn of the century.

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: Blacks would be prevented from voting through legal means (poll taxes, literacy tests) or intimidation.
Segregation (aka Jim Crow Laws): Blacks 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 blacks. In other words, separate facilities would serve as a constant reminder to blacks that they were unequal to whites.
Economically: 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 blacks 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.