After the war, a new industrialism helped rebuild the North, but the South lay in ruins. "King Cotton's" plantation lifestyle was over. Both black and white abolitionists celebrated the end of slavery. Freed slaves especially looked to the future with hope. However, these newly freed four million African Americans, most without education, money or jobs, soon found that emancipation did not mean true freedom.

Southern states imposed harsh "black codes" to keep former slaves inferior. Southerners argued that only they could govern affairs, including those concerning former slaves, within the borders of their own states. They argued that black politicians were nothing more than the tools of northern Republicans. But by 1866, Congress began to provide legal protection for the rights of blacks as it "reconstructed" society to include equality for all races. New constitutional amendments guaranteed that no citizen could be stripped of his rights unjustly. During the period of 1866 to 1877, blacks gained a foothold into the rights and privileges of citizenship during the "Reconstruction era."

The 13th Amendment passed in the 1865 prohibited slavery; the 14th Amendment passed in the 1868 granted full rights of citizenship and protection of the laws to any person born in the United States; and the 15th Amendment passed in 1870 was to grant the right to vote to any male regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Newly elected black congressmen and state legislators helped pass sweeping legislation promoting education and other necessities for African Americans.

Resentment against the move toward black equality fueled the creation of white supremacist groups such as the Knights of the White Camelia. The most enduring of these, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, began in 1866 in Pulaski, TN. They created titles and draped themselves and their horses with sheets. Their nighttime rides became more violent as the "Invisible Empire" vowed to keep America "free for the white man." Sworn to secrecy, the disguised members beat, lynched, and murdered blacks. A burning cross often marked their actions. New laws helped restrict vigilante groups, but they revived after Reconstruction.

African Americans faced great disadvantages in education, beginning during slavery when it was illegal for them to read and write, into the era of Jim Crow, when they were forbidden to attend school with white children. Separate schools, common after the Civil War, were legalized in the late 19th century. Schools and facilities for black students rarely equaled those for white. The cramped, unheated rooms often lacked water, plumbing, textbooks, paper, or other teaching supplies.

Many African Americans felt discouraged by the hardening discrimination and the decreasing opportunities in the South. Thousands moved north, where they hoped to find jobs in industry or land for farming, and the freedom to enjoy all the rights granted them in the Constitution. "Exodusters" migrated to Kansas between 1873 and 1879. Others moved to northern cities. The large influx of blacks into northern communities, and the resulting racial tension, erupted into riots and other violence in the early 20th century.

After 1877, and the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, the South quickly replaced Reconstruction laws with new ones that restricted the rights of blacks. These laws allowed the South's new upper class of planters, merchants, and industrialists to prosper, while most blacks sank deeper into poverty. Between 1880 and 1900, the per capita income of the Deep South showed no increase at all, and the acreage owned by black farmers decreased. Racial segregation, called "Jim Crow," excluded blacks from public transport and facilities, jobs, juries, and neighborhoods. Blacks had separate hospitals, prisons, orphanages, parks, and pools. The 19th century ended with the races firmly segregated - culturally and legally.

But protest in the South did not disappear, even within the confines of segregated society. Many brave men and women refused to accept second-class citizenship. These people dedicated their lives to fighting segregation, and ushered in a new era of protest efforts across the country. Between 1900 and 1950 community leaders in dozen of southern cities organized pickets, protests, boycotts in response to Jim Crow streetcars, schools, and restaurants. These early efforts encouraged group unity within the struggle, and helped blacks move aggressively to change their situation.

New organizations set up to help African Americans in the South welcomed financial support from northern philanthropist. Generous donations from philanthropists such as George Peabody, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller provided schools, libraries, endowments, scholarships, and support for teacher training and industrial education. Alone, the Julius Rosenwald Fund (est. 1912) helped build over 5,000 public schools for southern black students.

In 1910, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed to advocate civil rights, and in 1908 the National Urban League organized. Both aimed at fighting unlawful discrimination through the nation's courts and with sustained efforts to reveal injustice wherever it existed.

Meanwhile during this same period, segregationists continued to use legal and illegal means to try to control African Americans. The press, books, and advertisements featuring black stereotypes and other media seemed to support the idea of black inferiority.

Read More About:
Homer Plessy
Marcus Garvey
Ida B. Wells
Jim Crow
W.E.B. DuBois
Booker T. Washington
Compromise of 1877
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Urban League