A Continued Struggle for Freedom: Race Relations in Reconstruction
Reconstruction saw several significant changes in race relations in the United States. While it saw the passage of several laws and constitutional amendments which expanded the legal protections and freedoms of black Americans, it also saw various ways in which states undermined their spirit and continued the de facto subjugation and discrimination of freed slaves and their descendants in other ways. This essay will briefly examine three of those changes.
With the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the institution of chattel slavery was formally ended throughout the United States. However, many states continued the political and economic subjugation of former slaves and their descendants in new ways. Reconstruction saw several changes in race relations, which officially expanded the civil rights of freed slaves with the passage of three constitutional amendments. It also saw the widespread de facto disenfranchisement of blacks and the imposition of second-class status through Jim Crow laws.
The Thirteenth Amendment formally ended slavery in the United States and was passed during a wave of optimism for the development of the freedom of black Americans. However, the Amendment left open the question as to whether freedom for blacks would imply the need for additional rights for former slaves (Foner, 1987, pg. 869). Indeed, while blacks had been formally freed from the bondage of chattel slavery, they continued to exist in a second-class role where their citizenship status was called into question. The Fourteenth Amendment, for the first time, included whites and blacks both equally forbidding their discrimination by states under the law. The Fifteenth Amendment then explicitly conferred the right to vote to all male citizens regardless of race (Foner, 1987, pg. 880).
However, these new amendments and laws did not prevent de facto discrimination and continued disenfranchisement of blacks in the South. While the Fifteenth Amendment forbade the ability of states to restrict voting rights based on race, it left open the possibility to restrict it on other conditions. Restrictions like literacy tests and poll taxes were strictly enforced on blacks in order to disenfranchise them of the right to vote while not officially violating the Fifteenth Amendment (Tischauser, 2013, pg. 47). The establishment of Jim Crow laws also separated blacks from whites and effectively codified the second-class citizen status of freed slaves and their descendants by restricting their equal access and enjoyment to accommodations, facilities, and services.
While emancipation and post-war reconstruction did see the expansion of legal protections and freedoms of blacks in America, these codes were undermined and, in some places, rendered effective in name only. Reconstruction saw numerous changes in race relations in the United States, but the examples of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the enactment of Jim Crow laws, demonstrates this dynamic of a continued struggle for freedom after the Civil War.
References
Tischauser, L. V. (2013). Jim Crow Laws. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood.
Foner, E. (1987). Rights and the Constitution in Black Life during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Journal of American History, 74(3), 863-883. doi:10.2307/1902157
