Concept: Conflict and Change Individuals and Groups Rule of Law

1. SS8H6cAnalyze the impact of Reconstruction on Georgia and other southern states, emphasizing Freedmen’s Bureau; sharecropping and tenant farming; Reconstruction plans; 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution; Henry McNeal Turner and black legislators; and the Ku Klux Klan. Concept: Conflict and Change Individuals and Groups Rule of Law

2. RECONSTRUCTION PLANS(plan to readmit southern states back into the Union) PRESIDENTIAL CONGRESSIONAL Radical Republicans in Congress did not like how southern states were abusing former slaves Created five military districts in the South with US soldiers to protect the rights of former slaves States had to rewrite their constitutions Former Confederate leaders could no longer have power 13th amendment – abolish slavery 14th amendment – grant citizenship and equal rights to all persons born in the United States 15th amendment – guarantee freedmen the right to vote • Presidents Lincoln and Andrew Johnson wanted to quickly reunite the country together • 10% PLAN – only ten percent of the voting population in each southern state had to take an oath of loyalty • 13th Amendment – abolish slavery

5. WHAT WERE BLACK CODES? RULES AND LAWS LIMITING THE FREEDOM OF BLACKS IN THE SOUTH • RACIAL SEGREGATION (SEPARATION OF THE RACES) • “PERSONS OF COLOR” COULD NOT VOTE • COULD NOT HOLD OFFICE (MAYOR, CONGRESSMAN, SENATOR, JUDGE, SHERIFF, ETC…) • HAD TO OBEY CURFEWS • COULD NOT SERVE ON JURIES • COULD NOT TESTIFY AGAINST WHITES IN COURT • ARRESTED FOR NOT HAVING A JOB • FORCED TO WORK ON ROAD CREWS OR FARMS UNTIL FINES PAID

7. Sharecroppers Sharecroppers' House A sharecropper stands in the door of her Lowndes County home, circa 1910. In that year black sharecroppers managed more than 106,000 farms in Georgia. Sharecroppers Sharecroppers pose in a Bulloch County tobacco field in 1949. The practice of sharecropping, which involved workers raising crops on someone else's farm in exchange for a portion of the harvest, developed in the years after the Civil War and persisted until the mid-twentieth century.

8. Tenant Farmers Tenant Homes The homes of tenant farmers stand alongside a cotton field in Georgia. Landless whites, many of whom were farm tenants, made up nearly half the white populace in the state by 1860. Tenant Farmer Home With few exceptions antebellum tenant farmers in Georgia were white. After the Civil War most tenants (including sharecroppers) were former slaves.

9. HENRY McNEAL TURNER • Member of the Republican Party • African-American elected to the Georgia legislature in 1868 • However, the all-white Democratic Party legislature denied Henry McNeal Turner and 26 other black legislators from participating in Georgia’s General Assembly (legislature), claiming that blacks had the right to vote, but not the right to hold office • The United States government over-ruled Georgia’s legislature and allowed Turner and his fellow black legislators to be able to hold office and take their seats in Georgia’s General Assembly.

10. HENRY McNEAL TURNER “For myself, sir, I was raised in the cotton field of South Carolina, and in order to prepare myself for usefulness, as well to myself as to my race, I determined to devote my spare hours to study. When the overseer retired at night to his comfortable couch, I sat and read and thought and studied, until I heard him blow his horn in the morning. He frequently told me, with an oath, that if he discovered me attempting to learn, that he would whip me to death, and I have no doubt he would have done so, if he had found an opportunity. I prayed to Almighty God to assist me, and He did, and I thank Him with my whole heart and soul...”

11. HENRY McNEAL TURNER “If Congress has simply given me a merely sufficient civil and political rights to make me a mere political slave for Democrats, or anybody else giving them the opportunity of jumping on my back in order to leap into political power I do not thank Congress for it. Never, so help me God, shall I be a political slave. I am not now speaking for those colored men who sit with me in this House, nor do I say that they endorse my sentiments, but assisting Mr. Lincoln to take me out of servile slavery did not intend to put me and my race into political slavery. If they did, let them take away my ballot I do not want it, and shall not have it. I don't want to be a mere tool of that sort. I have been a slave long enough already.”

12. HENRY McNEAL TURNER “Go on with your oppressions. Babylon fell. Where is Greece? And where is Rome, the Mistress Empire of the world? Why is it that she stands, today, in broken fragments throughout Europe? Because oppression killed her. Every act that we commit is like a bounding ball. If you curse a man, that curse rebounds upon you; and when you bless a man, the blessing returns to you; and when you oppress a man, the oppression also will rebound. Where have you ever heard of four millions of freemen being governed by laws, and yet have no hand in their making? Search the records of the world, and you will find no example.”