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The Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedman's Bank
Congress created The Freedmen’s Bureau to provide food, clothing, medicine, education, employment opportunities and legal services to former slaves and impoverished southerners. Freedman’s Bank helped some 70,000 African Americans build their savings and investments. It failed in 1873 due to mismanagement and an economic downturn. -
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870. They were a hate group that largely intimidated and terrorized African Americans (and other races/religions). -
The 14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868.
1.State and federal citizenship for all persons regardless of race both born or naturalized in the United States was reaffirmed.
2.No state would be allowed to abridge the "privileges and immunities" of citizens.
3.No person was allowed to be deprived of life, liberty,or property without "due process of law."
4.No person could be denied "equal protection of the laws." -
The 15th Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment granted all male citizens, regardless of “race, color or previous condition of servitude,” the right to vote. Some southern states used literacy tests, poll taxes or outright violence and intimidation to deprive African Americans of this right. -
Hiram Revels
Hiram Revels became the first African American in Congress. He was elected to be a Mississippi Senate representative. A former teacher, Revels served on the Committee on Education and Labor and was an advocate for the education of former slaves. -
Joseph Rainey
South Carolina Representative Joseph Rainey was the first African American elected to the House of Representatives. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 protected the rights of all Americans, regardless of race, to use public facilities including restaurants, theaters and trains. Its great failure was that it failed to provide equal access to education. The act was not enforced and major portions of it were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883. -
Jim Crow Laws
State and local laws passed from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the mid-1950s by which white southerners reasserted their dominance by denying African Americans basic social, economic, and civil rights. Poll taxes and literacy tests, which even literate blacks were not allowed to pass, were common means of disenfranchising black voters. Jim Crow laws also extended to the private sphere. -
Plessy v. Ferguson Decision
Supreme Court rules that separate but equal facilities for different races is legal. -
Introduction of Anti-Lynching Bills
In the early 1900s, more than 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress. The House of Representatives passed three such bills, but southern opposition in the Senate blocked such measures. In 2005, the Senate approved a resolution apologizing for its failure to act on such legislation which could have protected many African Americans from a terrible death. -
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. -
Riots
Over 25 race riots occured in the summer of 1919.
38 killed in Chicago.
70 blacks were lynched in the South. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus. She was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, known as “Jim Crow laws.” -
The Commission on Civil Rights
Congress created the United States Commission on Civil Rights as an independent advisory commission to investigate and report abuses or denials of civil rights. The commission’s reports shaped legislation enforcing desegregation, voting rights and equal employment. -
"I Have A Dream"
Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech to demand racial equality. It was to make people aware that no matter what the color skin a person has, they were no less of a person. It dramatically affected the progress of the Civil Rights movement. -
The 24th Amendment
Poll tax had been used to prevent blacks from voting and the 24th Amendment outlawed this. Black voter registration increased and candidates begun to turn away from white supremacy views in attempt to attract black voters -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act outlawed discrimination or segregation in public places, enforced school desegregation and prohibited employment discrimination. It was the most comprehensive civil rights legislation passed by Congress since Reconstruction.
