Reconstruction and Disenfranchisement Vocab List - US History



Reconstruction and Disenfranchisement Vocab List

• 14th Amendment

o Reconstruction amendment adopted on July 9, 1868

o Addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws.

o Gives Congress enforcement powers

o Prohibits state and local government officials from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without legislative authorization

• 15th Amendment

o Reconstruction amendment adopted on February 3, 1870

o Prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on the citizens’ race, color, or previous conditions or servitude.

o Passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the law

• Black Codes

o Term originated from "negro leaders and the Republican organs"

o Had effects of restricting African American’s freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

o Main purpose was to maintain the system of white supremacy that made slavery possible.

• Booker T. Washington

o African American educator, author, orator, and president’s advisor

o Dominant leader in the African American community

o Leading voice of the former slaves

• Carpetbagger / Scalawag

o Pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners who moved to South during the Reconstruction era.

o Term referred to the observation that these newcomers tended to carry carpet bags

o Carpetbaggers seen as insidious Northern Outsiders with questionable objectives meddling in local politics.

o Derogatory term

o Scalawag

▪ Slur against Southerners to betray the region's values by supporting policies considered "Northern" such as desegregation and racial integration.

• Civil Rights Act of 1866

o Enacted April 9, 1866 ( in the wake of the Civil War

o A United States federal law that was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans

o 1865, the Act was enacted by Congress in 1865 but vetoed by President Andrew Johnson

o April 1866 Congress again passed the bill. Although Johnson again vetoed it, a two-thirds majority in each house overcame the veto and the bill became law

o Failed to immediately secure the civil rights of African Americans

o Made it illegal in the U.S. to discriminate in jobs and housing on the basis of race. However, federal penalties were not provided.

• Civil Rights Act of 1875

o Aka Enforcement Act or Force Act

o Passed by Congress in February 1875 and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875

o US federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era

o guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and prohibited exclusion from jury service

o Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional in 1883

• Freedmen’s Bureau

o The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands

o U.S. federal government agency that aided distressed freedmen (freed slaves) during the Reconstruction era

o Bureau encouraged former plantation owners to rebuild their plantations, urged African Americans to gain employment, kept an eye on contracts between labor and management, and pushed both whites and blacks to work together as employers and employees rather than as masters and as slaves

o Powers were expanded in 1866 to help find lost family for African Americans and teach them to read and write so they could better do so themselves

o Also served as legal advocates for African Americans in both local and national courts, mostly in cases dealing with family issues

o Initiated by President Abraham Lincoln and disbanded under President Ulysses S. Grant

• Grandfather Clause

o Provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations, while a new rule will apply to all future cases

o Concept originated in late 19th century legislation and constitutional amendments passed by a number of U.S. Southern states

( created new literacy and property restrictions on voting, but exempted those whose ancestors (grandfathers) had the right to vote before the Civil War

( the intent and effect of such rules was to prevent poor and illiterate African American former slaves and their descendants from voting, but without denying poor and illiterate whites the right to vote.

( these original grandfather clauses were eventually ruled unconstitutional

• Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

o Informally known as the Klan or the "Hooded Order"

o Name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism

o Terms are also used to describe Nazi and fascist movements, and other groups who hold extreme nationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist or reactionary views

• Literacy Test

o During Reconstruction, many conservative southerners wanted to disenfranchise Blacks and poor Whites. Literacy test, which was like the standardized test back in the 1890s, was one of the ways they discriminated the Blacks and poor Whites. (since they had poor education, they had low scores in this test) They had to get certain scores to get citizenship and vote.

• Lynching

o Practice of killing people by extrajudicial mob action (Wikipedia)

o Mostly in Southern States in late 19th century and 20th century

o Stirred by disenfranchisement and ‘white supremacy’

• Plessy v. Ferguson

o “separate but equal”

o Homer Plessy, 7/8th Caucasian and 1/8th African, was tried for riding a “white only cart” because he was still recognized as black for being 1/8th black. In court, he argued that it was unconstitutional to arrest him because it was against the 13th and 14th amendment, which granted all blacks “equal rights”. However, the Supreme Court decided that separating whites and blacks in different train cars was not at all unequal.

• Poll Tax

o Passed in order to restrict blacks and poor whites from voting.

o Used along with literacy test

o In many Southern states and some Northern states, they required voters to have paid the “poll tax” and if they did not, they could not vote. This meant that a lot of blacks and poor whites could not vote because either they had no money to pay or they were sharecroppers and tenant farmers who often moved and they did not pay the poll tax in the state that they moved into.

• President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan

o Lenient

o Offer pardon (amnesty) to confederates who pledged loyalty to the Union

o Presidential Pardon

o William Holden as governor of N. Carolina to amend its constitution and create a republican form of government

o States did not have to allow Blacks to vote

o Overall favored confederates, disadvantage to freed slaves and Blacks

• Reconstruction Act of 1867

o 4 statutes passed as process of Reconstruction

o Actual title was: "An act to provide for the more efficient government of the Rebel States"

o Passed on March 2, 1867

o Required Confederate States to fulfill all requirements of the Acts to be readmitted to the Union

o Act excluded Tennessee, which had already been readmitted to the Union ( ratified the 14th Amendment

• Segregation / Integration

o Segregation: separation of people based on racial, religion, sex, color, etc.

o Integration: movement of minority groups such as ethnic minorities, refugees and underprivileged sections of a society into the mainstream of societies

• Sharecropping / Tenant Farming

o Sharecropping: system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on the land

o Tenant Farmer: one who resides on land owned by a landlord.

o Tenant Farming: Land owner contribute land, Tenant Farmer contribute labor and pay the land owner a portion of product produced or a portion the cash earned or a combination of both

• The Compromise of 1877

o Purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election

o Compromise won Republican Rutherford Hayes presidency over Republican Samuel Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove federal troops out of state politics in the South

o Republican President Ulysses Grant removed soldiers from Florida. Hayes removed remaining troops form South Carolina and Louisiana

o Ended the Reconstruction Era

o African American historians sometimes call it "The Great Betrayal."

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download