PBS, 'Reconstruction: America After the Civil War' WETA, 2:00 Today
Last edited Sun Jun 9, 2019, 02:39 PM - Edit history (1)
More & Videos, https://www.pbs.org/show/reconstruction-america-after-civil-war/
Every time I watch this new, excellent 4- hour series I learn more about major topics that are largely omitted in most US public education programs. This weekend for the fundraiser for MPT (Md. Public TV) Dr. Gates joined the hosts and added more insights during their discussions: the post Civil War Reconstruction period was a time of considerable achievement for African Americans but also an era of significant 'Rollback' of new progressive gains by circumventing laws, violence and oppression. The Jim Crow era also contained elements similar to today's Alt Right he said. Much to think about.
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- The Mississippi Plan used literacy and taking tests to prevent African Americans from casting ballots to vote.
- Wiki, 'MISSISSIPPI PLAN.' The Mississippi Plan of 1875 was developed by conservative white Democrats as part of the white insurgency during the Reconstruction Era in the Southern United States. It was devised by the Democratic Party in that state to overthrow the Republican Party in Mississippi by means of organized threats of violence and suppression or purchase of the black vote. Democrats wanted to regain political control of the legislature and governor's office. Their success in doing so led to similar plans being adopted by white Democrats in South Carolina and other majority-black states.
To end election violence and ensure that freedmen were excluded from politics, the Democrat-dominated state legislature passed a new constitution in 1890, which effectively disenfranchised and disarmed most blacks by erecting barriers to voter registration and firearms ownership. Disenfranchisement was enforced through terrorist violence and fraud, and most black people stopped trying to register or vote. They did not regain the power to vote until the late 1960s after the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed to authorize federal oversight of state practices and protect citizens' right to vote.
During Reconstruction, former slaves were granted citizenship and African-American men were granted the franchise by the 14th and 15th Amendments. The consequences of this were far-reaching and almost immediate, as freedmen eagerly registered and flooded the polls. Freedmen overwhelming registered as Republicans, allying with the party that had secured their emancipation. But they voted for white Republican candidates as well as for blacks.
For example, in the black-majority state of Mississippi, of the 100 delegates to the Mississippi constitutional convention that drafted the Reconstruction constitution, only 16 were black. In Mississippi's 1874 election, the Republican Party carried a 30,000 majority in what had been a Democratic Party stronghold when only whites voted. Republicans took the governor's office and some legislative seats, but blacks never held a majority of seats in any of the state legislatures, although that was their proportion of the population. Freedmen and other blacks (some free blacks had migrated from the North to work in the state), were elected to many local offices and held 10 of 36 seats in the state legislature that year. (They comprised a large majority of the population and voted for white Republicans as well as blacks.)
In 1874 whites in the city of Vicksburg were determined to suppress black voting in that year's election. White armed patrols prevented blacks from voting; Democrats succeeded in defeating all Republican city officials in the August election. By December the emboldened party forced the black county sheriff, Crosby, to flee to the state capital. Blacks who rallied to the city to aid the sheriff also had to flee in the face of superior white forces, as armed whites flooded the city. Over the next few days, armed white gangs may have murdered up to 300 blacks in the city and its vicinity, in what became known as the Vicksburg riots.
U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant sent a company of troops to Vicksburg in January 1875 to quell the violence and allow the sheriff's safe return. The sheriff was assassinated by his white deputy, A. Gilmer on June 7, 1875. In 1875, under their Mississippi Plan, the Democrats conducted a political dual-pronged battle to reverse Republican strength in the state. MORE, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Plan