Violence, Segregation, and "Separate But Equal"

Carpetbaggers, Scalawags, and the Klan

      During the Reconstruction period several discriminatory groups developed in order to intimidate the freedmen. The most infamous of these was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Originally the KKK was a social organization of ex-Confederate soldiers, but it soon grew into a terrorist group. The goal of the KKK was to use violence, intimidation, and voter fraud to keep African Americans from exercising their rights under the  thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments so that whites could regain control of state governments. 

      For poor whites, the Reconstruction period allowed some to have a political voice for the first time. Those that  cooperated with the Republican government in the South were called "scalawags" by the Southern elite and remained in a position of social inferiority. Like African Americans, some poor whites entered into sharecropping or tenant farming relationships with landowners. 

        Some Northerners moved to the South  during Reconstruction. Southerners accused these Northerners of taking advantage of the South, devastated by the war, and called them “carpetbaggers.” This name suggested that they were opportunists who had packed all of their belongings in a carpetbag (a suitcase made of leftover pieces of carpet) and come south to get rich quick and then run away. However, the historical record shows that most of the Northern migrants came as missionaries and entrepreneurs to help educate the freedmen and rebuild the economy of the South, and stayed on.

        The election of 1876 was so riddled with fraud that the electoral votes in three states were called into question. The election was decided by the House of Representatives. Democrats agreed to support the election of the Republican candidate in exchange for the removal of all federal troops from the South. This Compromise of 1877 resulted in the end of Reconstruction and African Americans were abandoned by the federal government. Democrats won control of the southern state governments.  The constitutional rights gained by the civil rights amendments were regularly violated by terrorist groups like the KKK (Klan).  Southern governments began passing state laws to limit the rights of African Americans guaranteed by the civil rights amendments.

KKK versus Federal Soldiers

Reconstruction Ends

"Separate But Equal"