reconstruction and the gilded age

• what was the position of African Americans in 1865?

  - not separated from partners or children anymore

  - limits to liberty

  - legally free

  - segregation

  - not equal

  - sharecropping

  - violence

  - personal liberty
• What were the Black Codes?

  laws that greatly limited the freedom of African Americans

  e.g.,

  - restricted right to work for white people

  - gave state the right to punish vagrants

  - gave states the right to return vagrants to forced labour

  - allowed those who attacked african americans to go unpunished
• what is the summary of measures passed during the reconstruction era?


  - civil rights act 1866

  - first reconstruction act 1867 - delegates could be whatever skin colour

  - fourteenth amendment 1868 - all had entitlement to due process of law

  - fifteenth amendment 1870 - ensured rights would not be denied by account of race

  - 1st, 2nd, 3rd enforcement act - tried to reduce segregation

  - civil rights act 1875 - made it unlawful to give different citizens different access to things
• what was the effect of congressional reconstruction?

  - clear that it did not achieve equality

  - but a remarkable number of AA took part in public life
• how did the role of federal institutions promoting civil rights decline after 1877?

  - congress did not defend the changes it had made

  - presidents did not generally fully support civil rights

  - the supreme court and state government worked in opposite directions
• when were the Jim Crow laws introduced?

  1877 (end of Reconstruction)
• What were Jim Crow laws?

  They were laws that enforced the strict separation of the races.
• When was Plessy v. Ferguson?


  May 18, 1896
• what was the plessy v. Ferguson case about?

  a court case about a Louisanna Black man(Homer Plessy) was put in jail for riding in the "White's Only" section of the train
• how can the supreme court be seen as a barrier to civil rights?

  - ruled the civil rights act of 1875 unconstitutional

  - plessy v. ferguson essentially legalised segregation
• how can the supreme court be seen as a promoter of civil rights?

  - gradual change in legal rulings between 1890 and 1944 which marked a change in attitudes to civil rights

  - Smith v. Allwright 1944

  - Brown v. Board 1954
• how much progress was made on civil rights in the reconstruction era?

  - arguably the reconstruction era was where the most progress was of AA civil rights apart from the era after the 1960s

  - if anything the political participation and hopes for a more equal society were higher in 1869 than 1960