Life for many African Americans changed very little during the Reconstruction era, despite the 13th Amendment. From "Black Codes" to sharecropping, the struggle for equality continued.
Born into slavery, Robert Smalls was forced to serve in the Confederate Navy during the Civil War.He took command of a ship and delivered it to Union forces. He eventually became a pilot in the U.S. Navy and advanced to the rank of captain in 1863.
Smalls became the highest ranking African-American officer in the Union Army. He later became a member of the South Carolina State House of Representatives.
Wikimedia Commons An engraving by Alfred R. Waud published on the 1867 cover of Harper's Bazar, depicting the first votes by African-Americans.Wikimedia Commons A sketching depicting the intentional burning of a schoolhouse for black children by a white mob in the Memphis Riots of 1866.Wikimedia Commons The Office of the Freedmen's Bureau in Memphis, Tennessee was a federal agency created in 1865 to aid newly freed slaves. The bureau built schools, aided in reconnecting families, and provided legal advocates for African-Americans in the South.Wikimedia Commons An illustration of the Colored National Convention in Tennessee, 1876.The Colored National Convention helped African Americans organize educational, labor, and legal justice services before, during, and after the Civil War.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images The first African-American to serve in U.S. Congress, Hiram R. Revels.Born free in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1827, was ordained as a minister and served as a chaplain in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was elected to the Senate in 1870.
Time Life Pictures/Timepix/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images The first elected black senator to serve a full term (1875-1881), Blanche Bruce. He continued to be a prominent member of high-society in Washington, D.C. after he left office.Wikimedia Commons White supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and The White League terrorized African-Americans in the South. The federal government was initially able to curtail some of the violence, but as the Southern states rejoined the U.S. government, and laws restricting Confederates from holding office were removed, the South passed laws curbing the federal government from intervening.Wikimedia Commons Joseph Hayne Rainey was the second black person to serve in U.S. Congress. His constituents comprised South Carolina's first district. Wikimedia Commons The Ironclad Oath required anyone seeking a seat in Congress to swear they'd never supported the Confederacy. Depicted here is a white Southern congressman-elect telling a clerk of the House of Representatives that he would like to secure his old seat, only to be told that, due to Reconstruction, "we can not accommodate you."Wikimedia Commons An African-American family in a wagon arrives at the Union lines, where freedom awaits.Location unspecified. January 31, 1863.
Wikimedia Commons A crowd takes to the street to celebrate the anniversary of Emancipation Day.Richmond, Virginia. 1905.
Wikimedia Commons A band plays during the celebration of the anniversary of the emancipation of African-American slaves.Texas. June 19, 1900.
Wikimedia Commons An image created by a white supremacist, made to warn whites of what he believed was to come following emancipation: a world where white boys shine the shoes of black men.Circa 1861-1862.
Wikimedia Commons A wagon full of African-American men, arrested under Jim Crow laws, who have been forced back into slavery as part of a prison chain gang.Pitt County, North Carolina. 1910.
Library of Congress A mob of people, too big to fit in the lens of the camera, gather to help lynch 18-year-old Jesse Washington, convicted of raping and murdering the wife of his white employer.Waco, Texas. May 15, 1916.
Wikimedia Commons The burned body of Jesse Washington hangs from a tree.Waco, Texas. May 15, 1916.
Wikimedia Commons Freed African-Americans stand in front of their homes.Little has changed. They are still living in the slave quarters on a white man's plantation.
Saint Helena Island, South Carolina. Circa 1863-1866.
Library of Congress Freedmen go back to work on the plantation, doing the exact same work they did as slaves.Saint Helena Island, South Carolina. Circa 1863-1866.
Library of Congress A sharecropper's home.Many freed families ended up renting property from former slave owners. They were required to give a major part of what they grew back to their former owners.
This family has done unusually well in their harvest. The original caption calls it "evidences of abundance."
Atlanta, Georgia. 1908.
New York Public Library Freed slaves walk to work gathering cotton at their former master's plantation.Beaufort, South Carolina. Circa 1863-1865.
Library of Congress A saloon warns its customers that it will serve whites only.Atlanta, Georgia. 1908.
New York Public Library A row of dilapidated homes where, as the original caption says, "some of the poorer negroes" live.Atlanta, Georgia. 1908.
New York Public Library A chain gang of African-American men.Location unspecified. 1898.
Library of Congress A family poses for a photograph shortly after winning their freedom.Richmond, Virginia. 1865.
New York Public Library An image warning people of "negroes of the criminal type."Atlanta, Georgia. 1908.
New York Public Library Unpaid laborers in a chain gang at work.Atlanta, Georgia. 1908.
New York Public Library One of the first schools built in the South for freedmen.Beaufort, South Carolina. Circa 1863-1865.
Library of Congress Inside of an all-black school, 40 years after the Civil War.Atlanta, Georgia. 1908
New York Public Library An African-American family rents a small plot of property from a white plantation owner.Atlanta, Georgia. 1908.
New York Public Library Teenagers living in urban slums sweep the streets.The original caption states that "it gives them employment and it teaches them civic responsibility and pride."
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1908.
New York Public Library A church built by freed slaves.Having gone their whole lives barred from education, the congregation have labelled their church "Colard Foakes," much to the amusement of the white photographer.
Beaufort, South Carolina. Circa 1863-1865.
Library of Congress A white teacher, Miss Harriet W. Murray, teaches freed black children to read.Sea Island, Georgia. 1866.
New York Public Library An early all-black school, built inside of a former farm.Athens, Georgia. Circa 1863-1866.
New York Public Library Students at Fisk University, an all-black school created just six months after the end of the Civil War, sit down for morning prayers.Nashville, Tennessee. 1900.
Wikimedia Commons Black students are taught how to make shoes.Long Beach, California. 1898.
New York Public Library Children at an orphanage learn how to make and repair furniture.Long Beach, California. 1898.
New York Public Library Children in an all-black school practice fire fighting.Long Beach, California. 1898.
New York Public Library A baseball team at an all-black school.Long Beach, California. 1898.
New York Public Library More than 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, little has changed.The children here still live in a sharecropper's home, paying debts to the children of former slave owners.
West Memphis, Arkansas. 1935.
New York Public Library This group of men still work on a former slave plantation. Each day, they work 11 hours and, for their time, are paid $1.Clarksdale, Mississippi. 1937.
New York Public Library Others work as migratory workers. This group is forced to work behind a barbwire fence.Bridgeville, Delaware. 1940.
New York Public Library An 82-year-old woman, born a slave, learns to read.She is working to get the things she couldn't have as a young woman, even in her later years.
Gee's Bend, Alabama. May 1939.
New York Public Library An aging former slave, more than 70 years after winning his freedom, poses in front of the broken-down shack he calls his home.Rhode Island. Circa 1937-1938.
Library of Congress
After Slavery And Before Freedom: 44 Pictures Of Life After Emancipation View GalleryFor newly freed African American slaves, life didn't change overnight. After the end of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment may have brought an end to slavery in name — but, through the Reconstruction era and beyond, white slave owners found other ways to keep the spirit of slavery alive.
According to History, the Union's 1865 victory gave an estimated four million slaves their freedom. Nonetheless, the south wouldn't let go of its control over African Americans without a legislative fight. Under President Andrew Johnson's administration, for instance, the south passed "Black Codes."
These regulated just how, where, and when former slaves and other African Americans were permitted to work. The North was so enraged at this strategy that any support for Presidential Reconstruction — which gave the white South free rein in transitioning former slaves from slavery to freedom.
As a result, the Republican Party's more extreme faction garnered prominence — leading to Radical Reconstruction in 1867. This allowed African Americans who barely became citizens to have an active voice in government for the very first time in American history.
While these weren't slight victories, as some of these black men won elections to southern state legislatures and to the U.S. Congress, the transition from being labeled three-fifths of a person to gaining respect as a human being was far from over.
Wikimedia CommonsCelebrating the Emancipation Proclamation in Massachusetts. The crowd and a Union band pose for a photo. As tradition had it, the honored person, a black man, is seated comfortably in a wheelbarrow.
Within 10 years, the incremental changes Reconstruction imposed wrought the furious reactionary response by entities like the Ku Klux Klan. Changes brought upon by Radical Reconstruction were reversed. Violence erupted across the South — and white supremacy became a crusade for the racist, old guard.
Essentially, Reconstruction wasn't easy, and things did not change overnight. There were countless battles — legal, cultural, and physical — that those fighting for a united country had to undergo to make change happen.
Some Freed Slaves Kept Working On The Same Plantations
As the South prepared for the realities of losing the Civil War, its leaders started planning how to keep the black workforce under their control. "There is really no difference," said Alabama Judge D.C. Humphreys at a convention in March 1964, "whether we hold them as absolute slaves, or obtain their labor by some other method."
Obtaining black labor wouldn't prove to be that hard. Many slaves knew nothing but their lives of servitude on the master's plantation and, with their newfound freedom, couldn't find new opportunities. As the Reconstruction era began, many slaves just stayed right where they were, working on the same plantations for the same white overseers.
Despite grand proclamations of freedom, little had actually changed. "I don't know when freedom come on. I never did know," freedman Charles Anderson of Arkansas told the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, trying to explain why he was still at the same plantation. "Master Stone never forced any of us to leave."
Convicts Were Forced Back Into Slavery
The fact that slavery wasn't entirely banned after the Civil War has gone largely unnoticed in basic America history courses. The 13th Amendment contained a clause that some of the Southern states exploited deeply to maintain control. The amendment permits "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...except as a punishment for crime."
These "Black Codes" were later expanded into the famous Jim Crow laws that allowed Southern states to lock up freed black men for next to nothing. During the Reconstruction era, black men could even be detained for cursing near a white woman. They'd subsequently be placed in a chain gang, and thus, be driven back into forced labor.
In some states, unequal pay and punitive measures plagued newly freed slaves, as well. Laws forced them to accept minuscule reimbursement — and if a black man was caught without a job, he could be charged with vagrancy.
The courts would find him a job and force him to work it, but this time they wouldn't even have to pay him a nickel.
Sharecropping Made Slaves Through Debt
The government promised freed slaves 40 acres of land and a mule to work it — but it never happened. They backed out of the deal nearly as soon as they promised it. The freed slaves didn't have any place to go, and most white landowners refused to sell to them.
Instead, many freed slaves started sharecropping. White landlords would rent out small patches of land to freedmen — but at a heavy cost. The white landlords could tell them what they had to grow, demand half of what they made, and stick them with a debt that was impossible to escape.
It was slavery in all but name. The freed black families were still living on a white man's land, growing what he ordered and giving it to him. They still had no way to leave, and upward mobility largely remained out of reach for people of color.
And all of these practices carried on for decades. When World War II began, countless black families were still living in sharecroppers' homes, working on plantations, or being forced into prison chain gangs. The U.S. was fighting injustice and inhumanity abroad, while maintaining it ruled with absolute morality back home.
Reconstruction Era Disenfranchisement And The Wilmington Insurrection
Despite the fact that the 15th Amendment, passed in 1870, gave African Americans the right to vote, there was little hope for widespread change through traditional political avenues.
Few events made that clearer than the Wilmington Insurrection. During the Reconstruction era, the Democrats who had ruled Wilmington, North Carolina, suddenly found themselves threatened by a newly enfranchised black population that made up 55 percent of Wilmington's populace — and it was clear they were going to vote for the party that had freed them: the Republicans.
Wikimedia Commons"First Colored Senator and Representatives in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States" from 1872. From left to right: Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Representatives Benjamin Turner of Alabama, Robert DeLarge of South Carolina, Josiah Walls of Florida, Jefferson Long of Georgia, Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliot of South Carolina.
Things began to look dire for the Democrats when poor whites, facing economic hardships of their own, cast their lot in with black Republicans and formed the Fusion Coalition, a wildly successful group that elected black Republicans to local offices and helped many black citizens achieve prominent roles in Wilmington's businesses.
Then, Democrats suffered the worst blow yet: the elections of 1894 and 1896 put Fusion party members in power in every statewide office.
So a secret coalition of nine Democratic strategists came up with a plan: they needed to regain power quickly, and the easiest way to do it would be to split the Fusion Coalition and panic white voters. They decided to run on a white supremacist platform.
A Coup D'État In The United States
In the Reconstruction era, racial tension was never far from the surface — which made propaganda a deadly weapon for fanning flames.
The Democratic strategists deployed a group of talented speakers to spread virulent racist oratory across the state. They organized white supremacy clubs. And they spread the rumor that African American men were raping white women the minute their husbands turned their backs.
Their campaign worked, and furious mobs began to terrorize black citizens. They kidnapped black people from their homes to whip and torture them, shot guns into black houses and at black passersby, and held white rallies.
When black people tried to purchase guns for self-defense, white newspapers reported that they were arming themselves for a violent confrontation with white people. For wealthy whites, black people weren't economically advancing quickly enough, while poor white people felt sidelined. The argument published by The Washington Post below succinctly explains this frustrating perspective.
"While thus numerically strong, the Negro is not a factor in the development of the city or section. With thirty years of freedom behind him and with an absolute equality of educational advantages with the whites, there is not today in Wilmington a single Negro savings bank or any other distinctively Negro educational or charitable institution; while the race has not produced a physician or lawyer of note. In other words, the Negro in Wilmington has progressed in very slight degree from the time when he was a slave. His condition can be summed up in a line. Of the taxes in the city of Wilmington and the county of New Hanover the whites pay 96 2/3rds per cent; while the Negroes pay the remainder — 3 1/3rds per cent. The Negro in North Carolina, as these figures show, is thriftless, improvident, does not accumulate money, and is not accounted a desirable citizen." —Henry L. West, journalist for The Washington Post, November 1898
The final straw came when Alexander Manly, a black newspaper editor, published an editorial pointing out that the vast majority of sexual relationships between black men and white women were entirely consensual.
Democrats responded by publishing a "White Declaration of Independence" that demanded Manly's immediate expulsion from the city and the destruction of his newspaper, charging the African American community with making it happen.
When black leaders protested that they weren't responsible for Manly's actions, Democratic leaders called 500 white businessmen to Wilmington's armory, where they picked up weapons and marched to the newspaper office, setting it on fire.
The mob swelled to a crowd of 2,000 and lost all reason: as they marched through the streets, they determined to kill every African American they encountered. They forced the Republican mayor, the aldermen, and the police chief to resign at gunpoint and installed a new Democratic city council the following day.
Somewhere between 60 and 300 African American citizens of Wilmington lost their lives, and more than 2,000 fled the city in the days following the massacre.
Without black voters to stop them, the Democrats of Wilmington codified the Reconstruction era's nascent Black Codes into the Jim Crow system, reaping the rewards of the first and only successful coup d'état in U.S. history to date.
And so slavery in America continued. Long after the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, slavery, at least in spirit, lived on.
Next, read about Ona Judge, the slave who escaped George Washington, then have a look at these letters from former slaves to their masters.
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