American Politics Today - Essentials (3rd Ed)

THE CONTEXT OF CIVIL RIGHTS| 393

ing slavery. It also held that slaves were property rather

than citizens and had no legal rights. With Abraham Lin-

coln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election, the south-

ern states believed that slavery was in jeopardy, so they

seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy.

The outcome of the Civil War restored national unity

and ended slavery, but the price was very high. About

528,000 Americans died in the war, with an astonish-

ingly high casualty rate of 25 percent among combatants.^7

Republicans moved quickly to ensure that the changes

accomplished by the war could not be easily undone: they

promptly adopted the Civil War Amendments to the Con-

stitution. The Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery, the

Fourteenth guaranteed that states could not deny newly

freed slaves the equal protection of the laws and provided

citizenship to anyone born in the United States, and the Fif-

teenth gave African American men the right to vote. These

amendments were ratifi ed within fi ve years, although

southern states resisted giving freed slaves “equal protec-

tion of the laws” over the next 100 years.

SLOW PROGRESS AFTER RECONSTRUCTION

During Reconstruction (1866–77), blacks in the South gained political power
through institutions such as the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Union League. With
the protection of the occupying northern army, blacks were able to vote and even
hold public offi ce. However, when federal troops withdrew and the Republican
Party abandoned the South, blacks were almost completely disenfranchised
through the imposition of residency requirements, poll taxes, literacy tests, the
grandfather clause, physical intimidation, and other forms of disqualifi cation.
Later the practice known as the “white primary” allowed only whites to vote in
Democratic primary elections; given that the Republican Party did not exist in
most southern states, blacks were eff ectively disenfranchised. Although most of
these provisions claimed to be race neutral, their impact fell disproportionately
on black voters and virtually eliminated black voting. Despite the constitutional
guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, blacks had little access
to the political system in the South, and they had little success in winning offi ce at
any level in the rest of the nation.^8
The social and economic position of blacks in the South followed a path similar
to their political fortunes. When Reconstruction ended in 1877 the southern states
enacted “black codes,” or Jim Crow laws, that led to complete segregation of the
races. Jim Crow laws forbade interracial marriage and mandated the separation
of the races in neighborhoods, hotels, apartments, hospitals, schools, restrooms,
drinking founta ins, restaura nts, elevators, a nd even cemeter y plots. In cases where
it wou ld have been i nconven ient t o complet ely sepa rat e t he ra ces, a s i n publ ic t ra n s-
portation, blacks had to sit in the back of the bus or in separate cars on the train and
give up their seats to whites if asked. The Supreme Court validated these practices
in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in establishing the “separate but equal” doctrine,
offi cially permitting segregation as long as blacks had equal facilities.
Initially after Reconstruction, the rest of the nation mostly ignored the status
of blacks because 90 percent of all African Americans lived in the South. But as
blacks’ northward migration gradually transformed the nation’s demographic

SLAVERY WAS PART OF THE AMERICAN

economy from the 1600s until the

Civil War in 1861. The system of

slavery in the South created a

highly unequal society in which

African Americans were denied

virtually all rights.

disenfranchised To have been

denied the ability to exercise a right,

such as the right to vote.

grandfather clause A type of law

enacted in several southern states

to allow those who were permit-

ted to vote before the Civil War,

and their descendants, to bypass

literacy tests and other obstacles

to voting, thereby exempting whites

from these tests while continuing to

disenfranchise African Americans

and other people of color.

Jim Crow laws State and local

laws that mandated racial seg-

regation in all public facilities in

the South, many border states,

and some northern communities

between 1876 and 1964.

“separate but equal” The idea

that racial segregation was accepta-

ble as long as the separate facilities

were of equal quality; supported by

Plessy v. Ferguson and struck down

by Brown v. Board of Education.