The Goals and Failures of the First and Second Reconstructions
Some people say we've got a lot of malice some say its a lot of nerve. But, I say we won't quit moving until we get what we deserve. We have been bucked and we have been conned. We have been treated bad, talked about as just bones. But just as it takes two eyes to eyes make a pair. Brother we won't quit until we get our share. Say it loud- I'm Black and I'm Proud.
James Brown
Say it Loud- I'm Black and I'm Proud
Say It Loud- I'm Black and I'm Proud the Album
The First and Second Reconstructions held out the great promise of rectifying racial injustices in America. The First Reconstruction, emerging out of the chaos of the Civil War had as its goals equality for Blacks in voting, politics, and use of public facilities. The Second Reconstruction emerging out of the booming economy of the 1950's, had as its goals, integration, the end of Jim Crow and the more amorphous goal of making America a biracial democracy where, "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave holders will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." Even though both movements, were borne of high hopes they failed in bringing about their goals. Born in hope, they died in despair, as both movements saw many of their gains washed away. I propose to examine why they failed in realizing their goals. My thesis is that failure to incorporate economic justice for Blacks in both movements led to the failure of the First and Second Reconstruction.
The First Reconstruction came after the Civil War and lasted till 1877. The political, social, and economic conditions after the Civil War defined the goals of the First Reconstruction. At this time the Congress was divided politically on issues that grew out of the Civil War: Black equality, rebuilding the South, readmitting Southern states to Union, and deciding who would control government.
Southern Society has more the features of aristocracy then a democracy..... It is impossible that any practical equality of rights can exist where a few thousand men monopolize the who landed property. How can Republican institutions, free schools, free churches, free social intercourse exist in a mingled community of nabobs and serfs, of owners of twenty-thousand-acre manors, with lordly palaces, and the occupants of narrow huts inhabited by low White trash?
Stevens plan in the Republican Press though drew unfavorable responses. The plan was called brash and unfair. Only one newspaper endorsed it and that was the French paper La Temps which said, "There cannot be real emancipation for men who do no possess at least a small portion of soil."
Endnotes
1 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) p.228.
2 Ibid. pp.124-125.
3 Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) p. 148.
4 Ibid. p. 152.
5 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) pp.229-231.
6 Daniel J. Mcinerney, The Fortunate Heirs of Freedom: Abolition and the Republican Party (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994) p.151.
7 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) pp.228-251.
8 The transformation of the goals of Reconstruction was caused by Johnson's veto of nearly every Reconstruction bill. This forced Moderates to join the Radical Republicans in an alliance against President Johnson. Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) p.153.
9 Ibid. p.159.
10 Ibid. p. 161.
11 A total of twenty-two Blacks served in the House of Representatives during Reconstruction. C. Eric Lincoln, The Negro Pilgrimage in America (New York: Bantam, 1967) p.65.
12 In the Presidential election of 1876, the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, captured a majority of the popular vote and lead in the electoral college results. But the electoral votes of three Southern States still under Republican rule were in doubt, as Ginzberg writes, "In all three states the Republicans controlled the returning boards which had to certify the election results, and in all three states they certified their own parties ticket. As the history books reveal, the crisis was finally overcome when the Southern Democrats agreed to support the Republican Candidate Rutherford B. Hayes, as a part of a larger compromise (The Compromise of 1877). Hayes promised in return to withdraw Federal troops from the South." Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) pp. 182-183.
13 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974) p. 54.
14 Southern Democrats were comprised of Southern elites and formed a coalition with Blacks to prevent poor Whites from passing economic initiatives such as free silver, the break up of monopolies, and labor laws. Gerald Gaither, Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry In the New South (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1972) p.299.
15 The Coalition between poor Whites was based on a paternalistic order as C. Vann Woodward explains, "Blacks continued to vote in large numbers and hold minor offices and a few seats in Congress, but this could be turned to account by the Southern White Democrats who had trouble with White lower-class rebellion." C. Vann Woodward, Origins of a New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951) p.254.
16 Howard N. Robinowitz, Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) p.396.
17 Ibid. p.398.
18 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974) p. 85.
19 William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) p.63.
20 Until 1900, the only type of Jim Crow law (a law which legally segregates races) prevalent in the South was one applying to passengers aboard trains in the first class section. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974) p. 67.
21 Woodward sees the failure of Reconstruction as related to three events. First, it was brought about by the rise of racist theories and ideas in intellectual circles around 1890. These ideas, such as eugenics and social Darwinism eroded support among elite groups such as Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans for political equality for Blacks. Second, the rise of United States imperialism lead by the Republican party starting in 1898, undercut the ability and willingness of Northern Republicans to be the moral authority on racial equality. Third, the emergence of the populist movement in the late 1880's and 1890's forced the White elites to abandon their alliance with Blacks. This was because both the populists and the Southern Democrats sought the Black vote and when neither could be assured of controlling it, both Parties realized that it would be far better for them to disenfranchise the Black population than fight for its votes. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974) pp.82-83.
22 Wilson sees the emergence of Jim Crow and disenfranchisement of Blacks as related to three major events. First, the recession of the 1890's and the boll weevil blight brought Blacks and Whites in the lower-classes in intense competition for a shrinking pool of jobs. This intensification of competition between these groups manifested itself in White supremacy. Second, the rise of the labor movement in the 1890's lead to the rise of lower-class Whites to power this allowed them to codify into law Jim Crow which reflected their view of Blacks as competition in the labor market. Third, the migration of Blacks to urban areas in the North, and the use of Blacks as strike-breakers in Northern factories, created racial hostility among lower-class Whites toward Blacks. This forced Northern Republicans to no longer focus on racial equality because it undermined their support among White labor. William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) pp.59-60.
23 Howard N. Robinowitz, Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) p.400.
24 Ibid. p.399.
25 Gerald Gaither, Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry In the New South (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1972) p. 302.
26 Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) p. 134.
27 Ibid. pp. 132-133.
28 Ibid. p.135.
29 W.E.B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam Books, 1989) p.28.
30 Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) p. 201.
31 Ibid. p.203.
32 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989) pp.162.
33 Although the March on Washington was called a march for, "Freedom and Jobs" the goals of the March were political and social and not economic. The reason the March was called a march for, "Freedom and Jobs" was the idea for the march came from A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Randolph first proposed the march in 1941 to get President Roosevelt to open up defense jobs for blacks. But the march did not gather widespread support at the time. Then in 1962 Randolph planed a march for economic justice for Blacks. The idea was supported by CORE, SNCC, and SCLC. Martin Luther King's SCLC then took over organizing the march and downgraded Randolph's economic demands. Ibid. pp.159-161.
34 Ibid. p.96.
35 William Harris, The Harder We Run: Black Workers since the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) p.153.
36 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989) p.199.
37 Between 1965 and 1968 there were over three hundred race riots in American cities. Woodward concludes that these riots helped bring about the end of the Civil Rights Movement by creating factions within the movement as different groups pursued different policies to rectify injustice in the Northern ghettos. The Riots also created a backlash among the White populace which manifested itself in the defeat of the 1966 Civil Rights Act and the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. Ibid. pp..222-223.
38 The rise of racial separatism and extremism manifested itself within SNCC and CORE and the formation of Black Separatist groups such as the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and RAM. The rhetoric of extremists inside SNCC and in other groups captured television camera's and although Reverend Martin Luther King continued to march and speak, the face of the Civil Rights Movement became that of Angela Davis and Huey Newton; the song of the Civil Rights Movement changed from Reverend Martin Luther King's, "We Shall Overcome," to Stokely Carmichael's, "We Shall Overrun." Ibid. p..217.
39 Ibid. p.145.
40 In 1963, Malcolm X was the most quoted Black spokesman, "He played to the media, conjuring fantasies of jet fleets, piloted by Blacks, someday bombing all White neighborhoods." Ibid. p.154.
41 These Blacks were from what E. Franklin Frazier calls, "the Black Bourgeoisie." E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (New York: Free Press, 1957) pp.103-104.
42 Leaders have emerged such as Minister Louis Farrakhan and Colin Powell, who either propose Black Capitalist, and nationalist solutions to the plight of the urban poor, much like Marcus Garvey in the 1920's, or they provide accommodationist views of the Black struggle in America which meets with the approval of White elites much like Booker T. Washington at the turn of the century. Cornel West, Race Matters (New York, Random House, 1994) p.57.
43 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989) p.212.
44 Kathleen Rout, Eldridge Cleaver (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991) p.80.
45 Angela Davis, Frame Up (San Francisco: National Committee To Free Angela Davis, 1972) p.7.
46 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989) p.234.
47 Civil Rights initiatives though have helped the Black middle-class who have experienced unprecedented job prospects as they have been able to escape the urban ghettos and take advantage of jobs in the corporate and government sector. This points to what Wilson calls, "the declining significance of race in determining poverty," instead of race dictating someone's economic status, the status of their class is what determines their economic future; with the poor Blacks getting poorer and middle-class Blacks becoming wealthier. Because of this economic inequality in the Black community has grown more than inequality in the White community. William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) pp.151-154.
48 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989) p.231.