Raw Video Notes - Struggle for Freedom After Civil War

Civil War

When the Civil War ended in 1865, everyone thought slavery was finally over. The 13th Amendment officially ended it, and things were gradually going to become better for Black Americans... or so we thought. Freedom didn't exactly mean equality yet, and what came next was almost as horrible as what came before.

After Lincoln was assassinated on April 14th, 1865 at Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, his whole Reconstruction vision fell apart. He was a heavy advocate for getting African Americans the right to vote, especially those who served in the Civil War. When Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln's death, he was quickly impeached.

Southern states passed Black Codes, which were designed to maintain segregation and stop freed slaves from becoming equal. After this came sharecropping, which was pretty much a new word for slavery. It was supposed to be seen as a compromise, but ended up trapping people in poverty for generations. Here's how it worked: landowners divided their land into smaller plots and rented them to sharecroppers, who were mostly African Americans. The sharecroppers had to buy all their supplies from the landowners at crazy interest rates. They'd work all year long and somehow still be in debt by the end of the farming season. It was an inescapable cycle. African Americans also couldn't elect officials who would support them, so there was no political escape either. Sharecropping meant that slavery existed for another 100 years after being said to be abolished. It sadly didn't end until after World War II.

Between 1865 and 1877, African Americans gained the right to vote and hold office during the Reconstruction Era. The 14th and 15th Amendments opened the door for political participation, and 16 African Americans served in Congress. They also served as sheriffs and city council members in local governments across the South. This was huge progress, but it only lasted until Reconstruction ended in 1877. After this time, everything got worse with constant threats of violence and the Jim Crow Laws.

Booker T. Washington

This is where people like Booker T. Washington come in. At 16, he worked at Hampton Institute as a janitor just to pay for his own education. He then founded the Tuskegee Institute which grew to 800 students and 30 buildings. He even advised Presidents Roosevelt and Taft. His autobiography, "Up From Slavery", told his inspiring story. Even though W.E.B. Du Bois argued against a few of Washington's methods, he was still a major figure in Black education and growth during this period.

Between 1916 and 1970, African Americans decided they had enough, and around 6 million of them left the South for the North, which was then called The Great Migration. In 1900, 90% of African Americans lived in the South, but by 1916, hundreds of thousands took trains to New York, Chicago, Detroit, and other Northern cities to escape the harsh Jim Crow Laws and violence threats in the South.

The end of slavery didn't mean the end of racial oppression. It just took different acts and people to keep fighting until actual equality was shown.