I. Civil War 1860-1865
A. Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation 1863
B. War ends in April 1865; Lincoln assassignated April 14
C. Thirteenth Amendment ratified December 1865
abolishing slavery/involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime in the U.S.
South uses this to create "chain gangs" - blacks summarily
convicted of crimes and put to work on former plantations now called convict farms
D. 14th Amenment ratified July 1868 - making Blacks citizens of U.S.
extending national citizenship to everyone born/naturalized in states no person can be denied life, liberty or property without due process and equal protection of laws
(also forbid Southerners to make claims for lost property as result of
war) changes apportionment (no more 3/5)
E. 15th Amendment ~ formally enfranchises black men 21 and older

II. Civil War and the post war Amendments far from end of the story.
A. National government: Reconstruction
Lincoln succeeded by Andrew Johnson (VP southern slave owner) tried to impede reconstruction, enfranchisement
he vetoes two bills to extend the Freedmens' Bureau-Congress
passes second over his veto and avoids impeachment by 1 vote
B. Freedmens' Bureau 1866-77
[during war federal govt had redistributed some land that had been confisicated from Southerners -but Johnson discontinued the policy]
4 million former slaves in US
help freed slaves obtain leases on forfeited lands, abandoned land leased/sold to freed blacks - forty acres and a mule
also with setting up schools for Blacks in the South, running courts, helping Blacks negotiate labor contracts.   Used by Northerners to punish white Southerners for the war

III. Jim Crowism. What political, economic and social systems replace slavery in the South?
A. political formal enfranchisement - de facto exclusion South designs voting laws which exclude mostly Blacks
but also poor whites - education and property requirements

    1. literacy tests
    2. grandfather clauses
    3. poll taxes

B. economic peonage - sharecropping system Black families lease land mainly from whites - not necessarily former landowner - carpetbaggers, Russian Jews in the Black Belt; terms of lease - payment in kind - your harvest food, clothing, farm materials given on credit, debt accumulates throughout year - finish year even or still in debt most former slaves that stay on the land live in conditions little better than when they were in slavery

C. Social system - Jim Crow laws and Black Codes

    1. system of legal separation of the races in public places, theatres, restaurants,
    public ansportation, schools

    2. national government upholds legality of segregation in
    1896 Sup. Ct. decision Plessy v. Ferguson
    Plessy challenged LA statute requiring railway companies to provide
    "separate but equal" accomodations for "white and colored races"

        a.  grounds: 14th Amendment - equal protection clause

        b. majority decision written by Justice Brown:
        what was intent of statute? to enforce the equality of the two races
        but not intended to abolish distinction based on color or to force a
        commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.

        Separation does not imply inferiority - separate schools for white and black children
        upheld even in Northern states.

        c. plaintiff argues separation stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority
        Brown says Blacks have merely chosen to put that construction on it.

        d.plaintiff argues that prejudice can be overcome by legislation
        he says this is social engineering
        only voluntary association and appreciation of each others merits can overcome
        prejudice/racial instincts

        e. dissenting opinion - Justice Harlan
        Everyone knows that the purpose of the statute was not to exclude whites
        from black cars but to exclude blacks from white cars. A guise.

        He says the Constitution is colorblind. It tolerates no classes among citizens
        only their equal protection under the law.
        If evil results from comingling of the races it will be infinitely less than the evil
        accomplished by denying one race its civil rights and branding them with the
        badge of degradation, inferiority.

        f. decision stands for 59 years - not until 1955 overturned

    3. How segregation maintained? Blacks lack legal remedies, electoral remedies,
    economic means, socially enforced through terror, lynchings

    4. many freed slaves - emigrated to the North - seeking better living conditions,
    more economic opportunites