EOTO Reconstruction

 

During the EOTO portion of the class, I found that many of the presentations had a lot of information about the reconstruction era that I had researched for my presentation or information that was mentioned in the video “Reconstruction: America after the Civil War”. While I thought all the presentations given were good, I found myself interested in topics such as the civil rights act, the enforcement act, and forty acres and a mule.

 

I found the civil rights act interesting to learn more about because this topic has been brought up consistently as we learned more about the reconstruction era. The civil rights act was created to guarantee the rights of African Americans after they were freed from slavery. Both of these acts were necessary after the 13th amendment because while slaves were free they had no rights or citizenship and without rights, slaves did not have any true freedom.

However, during the presentation, I learned the difference between the 1866 civil rights act and the 1875 civil rights act. The 1866 civil rights act was created after the thirteenth amendment, but Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill because he believed it was overstepping states’ rights. This led to congress to surprisingly overturn the veto and the civil rights act of 1866 became the blueprint for the 14th amendment.

Similar to the 1866 civil rights bill the 1875 civil rights bill aimed to protect the rights of all citizens regardless of their race. Yet the key difference in this bill is it also aimed to protect all citizen's civil rights in public spaces and slowed all citizens to serve on the jury. This act was a major part of the Plessey vs Ferguson case because many places in the south had segregated areas where African American people were not allowed, in the Plessey case in a white-only train car. While according to this act Plessey should have the right to sit wherever he wanted as a citizen the court ruled against him, leading to the downfall of this act until 1964.

The second topic I found interesting was the forty acres and a mule. This is a term that I hear heavily referenced in my community. I’ve heard it reference in a lot of music, by family, coworkers, and friends. Often this term shows how much we cannot trust the government to give us anything despite the numerous years of trauma and slavery that they had caused. The phrase also is often time used to reference old money and property that many white people can have due to their great-grandparents while African Americans are not able to attain that kind of wealth because our grandparents were not given any land or wealth to pass down to future generations. 

In reality, forty acres and a mule were a promise made by General Sherman formally known as order 15. The order was meant to confiscate land in south Charleston and give it to feed slaves. This land would be 40 acres with only 800 feet of shoreline along with one mule. This was to give freed slaves something to start with since have been freed that had no property or stable income.

Additional Links 

https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/civil-rights-act-of-1866-april-9-1866-an-act-to-protect-all-persons-in-the-united-states-in-their-civil-rights-and-furnish-the-means-of-their-vindication

https://www.kqed.org/news/11910733/i-aint-leaving-without-my-40-acres-how-musicians-have-called-for-reparations