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