Reconstruction Challenges: Freedom, Schools, Land, and Racism

1. Reconstruction and daily life Chapter 18-2 By: Bryson Unkrich

2. Responding to freedom • Most African Americans’ first reaction to freedom was to leave the plantations. • Former slaves went looking for economic opportunity, while others travelled just because the could. • Freedom allowed African Americans to marry and raise families knowing their children couldn’t be sold.

3. Freedmen’s schools • African Americans no longer had to work for an owners benefit. They could now provide for their families. • Many African Americans went to freedmen’s schools or schools that educated African Americans to learn to read or write. • The schools were started by the Freedmen’s Bureau, Northern Missionary Groups, and other African American organizations. • The classes were held in warehouses, billiard rooms and former slave markets. • In rural areas they were held in churches and private homes.

4. Freedman’s schools • By 1869, more than 150,000 African American student were attending 3,000 schools. • 20% or African American adults could read. • Racists even killed teachers or burned schools in some parts of the south

5. Working the land • More than anything else, freed people wanted land. • To them land meant economic independence. • As one freedman said: • “give us our own land and we take care of ourselves, • but without land the old masters can hire us or starve • us, as they please”

6. Forty acres and a mule • As the civil war ended, General Sherman suggested that abandoned land was split into 40 acre sections and given to freedmen. • The army also had extra mules that Sherman wanted to loan. • The rumor spread and most freed people thought that they deserved at least that much. (see primary source page 579) • in the end, however, most freedmen received no land • Those who did own land often had to return it to the lands former owners- planters pardoned by President Johnson.

7. Forty acres and a mule • Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner pushed for a land reform. • Stevens proposed a plan that would give free people land from plantation owners. • However many Republicans argued against the plan because they thought that Plantation owners had the right to keep their plantations. Therefore the vote didn’t pass

8. The contract system • After the civil war, planters needed workers to raise cotton- the South’s main cash crop. • Many African-Americans accepted contracts for plantation work. • The contract system was far better then slavery– African Americans got paid and got to decide whom to work for. • But they were paid very low wages and the African Americans were often cheated. • As a result most African Americans turned to Sharecropping.

9. The economics of sharecropping • In the sharecropping system, farmers rented land on credit. • The landowner provided tools and seed. • At harvest farmers gave a share of their crops to the landowner. • Farmers wanted to grow food for their families but landowners wanted to grow cashcrops. • By the time sharecroppers had shared their crops and paid their debts they had little to no money left. • Most sharecroppers had little to no hope of escaping poverty.

10. Violent racism • African Americans in the South faced problems besides poverty- Violent racism. • Many planters and former confederate soldiers didn’t want African Americans to have equal rights. • Including a group called the Ku Klux Klan

11. The kukluxklan • In 1866 racism in the South spurred the rise of a terrorist group called the Ku Klux Klan • It was made up of poor farmers and former Confederate Soldiers. • Its goal was to restore Democratic control to the south and keep former slaves powerless. • By 1868, the Klan existed in nearly every southern state.

12. Terrorism by the kukluxklan • The Klan attacked blacks and White Republicans. • Klansmen road on horseback and dressed in robes and hoods to hide their faces. • They beat, tortured and killed people while burning schools, churches and houses. • They even lynched victims- killed them by hanging without a trial. • Targets of the Klan had little protection. • Military governors often ignored the violence. • President Johnson had appointed most of these authorities and were against reconstruction. • The Klan’s violence kept Republicans away from the polls and strengthened the Democrats’ power.

13. Works cited • Dallak, Robert, and Littell McDougal. "Chapter 18 Reconstruction." American history. Evanston, Ill.: McDougal Littell, 2008. 577-581. Print.