Reconstruction in the South

1. Reconstruction in the South 12.2

2. Objectives • Explain how Republicans gained control of southern state governments • Discuss how freedmen adjusted to freedom and the South’s new economic system • Summarize efforts to limit African Americans rights and the federal government’s response

3. Key Parts • Republican Governments Bring Change • Freed People Build New Communities • Remaking the Southern Economy • Violence Undermines Reform Efforts

4. Introduction • Read section 12.2 • Answer questions 4 and 6

5. Republican Governments Bring Change • By 1870 all Confederate states had met the requirements under Radical Reconstruction and rejoined the Union. • Between 1870-1877 almost 1,500 black men helped usher the Republican Party into the South. • These new black citizens served the South as school superintendents, sheriffs, mayors, coroner, police chiefs, and representatives. Six served as lieutenant governors, two state legislatures, and black speakers of the House.

6. Cont. • Schools in the south grew slowly, drawing in only about half of southern children by the end of the 1870. • The building of schools was expensive, especially because the schools were separated by race. • Also during this time role of political offices began to become very corrupt. The wealthy would pay politicians to represent a certain way.

7. Freed People Build New Communities • Many African Americans begin to build their own communities with churches, schools and other institutions. • The majority of African American families remained in rural areas taking up occupations as lumbering, railroad building or farming land for landowners. • Feed people immediately realized the value of learning to read and perform basic arithmetic.

8. Cont. • By 1866 there were as many as 150,000 African American students acquiring basic literacy. • Three years later that number double to 300,000 • Tuition was 10 percent of the laborers income. • The Freedman’s Bureau also helped establish black colleges.

9. Remaking the Southern Economy • Many of the South’s problems resulted from the uneven distribution of land. • As an agricultural region, the South’s wealth was defined by landownership. • In 1860 the wealthiest 5 percent of white southerners owned almost half the region’s land. • By 1880 about 7 percent of the South’s land was owned by African Americans.

10. Cont. • Even large land owners had no money to purchase supplies or pay workers. • Many southerners adopted one of three arrangements: sharecropping, share-tenancy, or tenant-farming. • Sharecropping is when landowners provide housing, food, and seed to his workers in return for a portion of the crops.

11. Cont.. • Share-tenancy was much like sharecropping, except that the farm worker chose what crop he would plant and bought his own supplies. Then gave a share of the crop to the landowner. • Tenant farming is when the tenant paid cash rent to a landowner and then was free to choose and manage his own crop and free to choose where he would live.

12. Violence Undermines Reform Efforts • The more progress African Americans made the more hostile white southerners became. • In 1866 the Ku Klux Klan formed in Tennessee. Klan members would roam the countryside at night and burn homes, schools, and churches often maiming or killing African Americans and their white allies. • They would be dressed in white robes and hoods and mounted on horses.

13. Cont. • The Klan took special aim at the symbols of black freedom: African American Teachers, ministers, and politicians. • Once the Fifteenth Amendment passed and guaranteed all American men the right to vote, Arkansas Republican legislators were murdered. • In 1870-1871 Congress took action and passed the Enforcement Acts, and made it a federal offense to interfere with a citizen’s right to vote.