Throughout the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proposed a new plan called Reconstruction. It required one tenth of the number of voters who voted in 1860 to take an oath of allegiance so the states could reorganize a state government. Also, to let the confederate states could come back into the Union. The state constitution had to be Republican in form, abolish slavery, and provide for Black education. On April 14th, 1865 Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth who was the leader of a conspiracy group that was committed to the southern cause. The Reconstruction plan fell into the hands of Vice President Andrew Johnson (Text pg. 2-5). Lee Anna Keith, author of “Battle of the Colfax Courthouse”, says the Reconstruction plan failed because of racism. She tells a story about a time when blacks were thought to have control of the courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana. There was an African America man named Jesse McKinney that was a part of the Republic faction at the courthouse and he was from a wealthy family. On April 5th, 1873 a group of White men from out of town ambushed him in front of his house and shot him in …show more content…
All the White men in the neighboring areas gathered their guns and horses. As the White men approached with their army, the Blacks surrounded their courthouse. There was a mean massacre that day. They were not going to let the Black men take control of the courthouse and they succeeded in seizing the building with no survivors. The next day, the families of the dead had to bury the bodies and 165 bodies were reported to be found within the entrenchment. The massacre in Colfax was an example of why Blacks were afraid to go into politics. The massacre that day was to set an example for the Blacks to not step over the boundaries. LeeAnna Keith said, “The white men of Louisiana would unite to defeat their enemies within, killing and dying for white supremacy and home rule” (text pg.
Nicholas Lemann begins his book “Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War” with the 1873 Colfax, Louisiana massacre where a White League militia comprised of former Confederate soldiers killed black Republican voters. The Colfax massacre was perhaps the bloodiest event of Reconstruction. Lemann views this event as a startup of what would happen later in Mississippi if Federal troops did not defend black voters. Lemann blames Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, for not stopping the White Line activity in Louisiana and Mississippi. Grant had worked hard to stop the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1870s with Congress passing legislation and Federal troops putting down Klan activity.
The Tulsa Race Riot was the destruction of Black Wall Street in 1921, which was caused by an allegation of a white woman accusing a black man of rape. It lasted from May 31st to June 1st. The Tulsa Race Riot caused plenty of damage from “dozens of deaths [and] hundreds of injuries” to the destruction of Black Wall Street leading to unemployment of the black community (Hoberock n. pag.). An estimated property loss was over $2.3 million. This was an important event in our Nation’s history because “it teaches how far hatred [and violence] can go” (Hoberock n. pag.).
In, We Have Taken a City, by H. Leon Prather Sr., we learn of the violence that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898. Throughout the paper, Prather writes about the different aspects that ultimately caused the racial massacre. Prather makes an important claim in his short introduction about the events in Wilmington in 1898. He also makes several key points throughout the paper, one being that the racial massacre would not have occurred if it would not have been for the white supremacy campaign. He provides key information in his paper that supports the claim.
John Weaver argues that on August 13, 1906 in Brownsville, TX, black soldiers were accused of shooting up the town. With unreliable statements, false evidence and a racist town, President Roosevelt discharged without honor one hundred and sixty-seven black soldiers. The very next day after the shooting, civilians came out with statements that didn’t add up or were just completely unreliable. Mrs. Leahy stated that she saw the soldiers from thirty-five feet away, Elkins too testified that he saw the Negroes but from sixty-five feet away.
Death of Reconstruction What was Reconstruction and why was it killed? After the Civil War from 1865-1877 Abraham Lincoln tried to rebuild the nation. It was the period to unite and restore the political, economic, and social relationship in the southern states with the rest of the nation. Lincoln had a vision of everyone being equal but the South wasn't cooperating and the North eventually gave up killing the dream of Reconstruction.
Jesse Washington, a teenage African American farmland, was lynched in Waco, Texas, 0n May 15, 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. RecWashington was accused of raping and murdering Lucy fryer, the wife or his white employer in rural Robinson, Texas. There were no eyewitnesses to the crime, but during his interrogation by the mc Lennon county sheriff he signed a confession and described the location of the murder weapon. Washington was tried for murder in Waco, in a courtroom filled with furious locals. He entered a guilty plea and was quickly sentence to death.
The Burning Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by Tim Madigan, tells a story of the events leading up to and the actual race riot in Tulsa. During this time in 1921 racism was still a very prominent problem among the people not only in Tulsa but in the country. As many can see from The Burning white people felt that they were more dominant that then the African American race. As they took down the black community of Tulsa, which was called Greenwood, white people were mean and destructive towards the African American race in 1921. Dominance, jealousy, and guilt were main factors to why the white people were so mean.
The Reconstruction, one of the roughest and controversial era in American history, took place after the Civil War between 1865 and 1877. This began the process of bringing the Nation back together and giving former slaves equals rights by three new Constitutional amendments. From the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Lincoln’s goal was the restoration of the Confederate states to the Union. In 1863, Lincoln proposed the Ten Percent Plan that granted amnesty to those Confederate states which swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. It would have given a general pardon to all southerners excluding high-ranking Confederate army officers and government officials.
Reconstruction of the south encompassed three major political initiatives: restoration of the Union, transformation of southern society, and enactment of progressive legislation favoring the rights of freed slaves. President Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction—issued in 1863, two years before the war even ended—mapped out the first of these initiatives, his Ten-Percent Plan. Under the plan, each southern state would be readmitted to the Union after 10 percent of its voting population had pledged future loyalty to the United States, and all Confederates except high-ranking government and military officials would be pardoned. After Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, President Andrew Johnson adopted the Ten-Percent Plan and pardoned thousands of Confederate officials. Radical Republicans in Congress, however, called for harsher measures, demanding a
Furthermore, President Johnson’s plan, which was very similar to Lincolns, allowed the southern states to be readmitted to the union after they abolished slavery, repudiate all debts incurred to the confederacy, and ratify the 13th amendment. By the time they were readmitted, it was evident that there wasn’t much change in the state governments. Within Johnson’s Plan, southern legislatures were able to pass repressive Black Codes that prohibited
Reconstruction was a period of time dedicated to rebuilding the nation after the Civil War. The war ended with the South being defeated and their economy being devastated. Many Southerners struggled after the war with rebuilding their land and lives. The President and Congress had to decide the terms for which the former Confederate states would be permitted to join the Union. President Lincoln’s plan for reuniting the country was found in the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.
Historically, lynchings happened tragically in the late 19th
Rosewood Massacre: A Race Riot In America In the first week of January in 1923 a racially motivated riot occurred int he small town of Rosewood, Florida. This riot escalated into a violent massacre that slaughtered many African Americans as well as Caucasians and lead to the demise of the entire town that had been established. This event became to be known as one several race riots that occurred in the United States of America during the early twentieth century. The events prior to the Rosewood Massacre, including the origins of the town, the massacre itself and the issues and events that were sub sequential to this catastrophic event all played a major role in the history of African Americans.
Abraham Lincoln’s vs Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan Lincoln shared the uncommon belief that the confederate states could still be part of the union and that the cause of the rebellion was only a few within the states which lead him to begin the reconstruction in December of 1863. This resulted in plans with lenient guidelines and although they were challenged by Wade-Davis Bill, Lincoln still rejected his ideas and kept his policies in place. Lincoln also allowed land to be given the newly freed slave or homeless white by distributing the land that had been confiscated from former land owners however this fell through once Johnson took office. After Lincoln’s death when Johnson was elected many things started to turn away from giving blacks equal rights and resulted in many things such a black codes which kept newly freed slaves from having the same rights as whites. When Lincoln first acted after the civil war, he offered policies that would allow the confederate slaves to become part of the union again and would allow a pardon for those states.
This also demonstrates how Women kept the ideas alive in U.S. politics too. Lastly, a massacre that resulted in the killing of hundreds of black people, was the Tulsa Race massacre. The Tulsa race massacre, also known as the black wall street massacre caused much trauma to the black community.