African Americans were set free when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and they were excited about the possibilities that freedom opened up to them.

Southern states were required to accept the three Reconstruction Amendments when they created their new state constitutions. Even though they appeared to want to allow the former slaves to remain free, it was hard to force the states to really accept African Americans as equals and follow through by providing freedom, citizenship, and voting rights.

Reconstruction Amendments

13th Amendment - Abolished Slavery

14th Amendment - Made every person born in the United States a citizen including African Americans

15th Amendment - Gave citizens the right to vote.

At first, African Americans were successful in reaching their goals, and some were elected to political office.  It wasn’t easy for these men.  They were met with resistance from other elected officials, but they served their country well in the Senate and House of Representatives to the US Congress.

Pictured here are Senator Hiram R. Revels and Representatives Benjamin S. Turner, Josiah T. Walls, Joseph H. Rainey, Robert B. Elliott, Robert C. De Large, and Jefferson F. Long.

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/images/05/0506001r.jpg

Before long, trouble sets in.  Headstrong men who were used to a certain way of life and didn’t like the idea of change, began to make changes that affected the African Americans new way of life.  

Black Codes, laws specifically aimed at returning African Americans to their lives before slavery ended, were put into place.  After a period of time, these laws wouldn’t be called black codes anymore. They became known as Jim Crow Laws.

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Freedom and citizenship were denied because any free African American had to be bonded in servitude to white landowners if they were living in a southern state.

Voting rights were denied with the implementation of a poll tax, literacy test, and a grandfather clause.  Each of these was used to make it difficult for African Americans to vote.  This also helped to ensure that African Americans did not become elected officials again.  

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/07/29/magazine/civil-rights-timeline-slide-4G26/civil-rights-timeline-slide-4G26-master675.jpg

Jim Crow Laws aimed to segregate the African Americans from white southerners. These laws prohibited schools, restaurants, theaters, etc. from having different races near each other.  There were “Black” areas and “Whites Only Areas”.  For example, schools were provided for each race.  African Americans went to the “black” school.

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Plessy v. Ferguson was a court case about which the Supreme Court decided.  They said that it was legal to separate races as long as they all had equal access to goods and services.  Southerners took this to the extreme and provided access to African Americans through back doors and alternate seating areas.

http://slideplayer.com/6093083/18/images/5/Plessy+v.+Ferguson+June+7%2C+1892%2C+was+jailed+for+sitting+in+the+White+car+of+the+East+Louisiana+Railroad..jpg

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) got involved in the discrimination of African Americans and began a series of hate filled actions that intimidated African Americans.  Lynchings, burning crosses, beatings, and much more were tactics that were used by KKK members to bring the former slaves back under the control of white people.  

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/sites/default/files/styles/article-gallery/public/m-1265.jpg?itok=9WAgMQkI

The Great Migration began as African Americans realized that they could not begin their new lives in the south.  They left because they were stuck in an endless cycle of poverty as the sharecropping arrangement kept them in debt, boll weevils, a bug that eats crops, damaged crops and caused more hardship for sharecroppers, and no white person would sell land to an African American. These factors along with laws that were prejudice against them pushed African Americans north and west.

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