Reconstruction

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Reconstruction was the period in United States history that followed the Civil War. During which the union worked to restore relations with the Confederate states after their defeat. The South faced enormous problems in rebuilding itself after the War. Many great cities were left in ruins; most of the railroad system was destroyed. Political leaders were faced with many difficult questions during Reconstruction. How should the Confederate leaders be punished? How should the states that withdrew from the Union be readmitted? What rights should be granted to the 4 million freed slaves, and how should these rights be protected? With the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment, some of these problems were solved. But eventually the North gradually lost interest in helping down South. With the passing of the Reconstruction era and the return of “white man’s government” to the Southern States, state laws were again adopted. These laws were reminiscent of the Black Codes, which had been passed right after the Civil War to “ keep the Negro in his place.” They established and enforced a system of racial segregation, under which members of the black and white races were required to be separated in the enjoyment of public and semi-public facilities. Separate schools, parks, waiting rooms, bus and railroad accommodations were required by law to be furnished to each race; and where completely separate facilities later on provided to be not feasible, as in a dining car, a curtained partition served to separate the races. Where the segregation was required by law, the question arose whether it violated the rights guaranteed to the newly freed black by the Fourteenth Amendment. This problem came to the Court for the first time in the present case, 28 years after the Amendment had been adopted. In 1890, the legislature of Louisiana had passed a statute providing “ that all railroad companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations . . . ” A fine of $25 or 20 days in jail was the penalty for sitting in the wrong compartment. On June 7, 1982, Homer A. Plessy, a 30-year old shoemaker, bought a train ticket for travel from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana. Plessy’s ancestry was one-eighth black and the rest, the other seven-eighths, white. But under Louisiana law he was considered to be black and was required, by law, to ride in the blacks-only railroad car. Plessy sat in the whites-only railroad car, refused to move, and was promptly arrested and thrown into jail. Plessy went to court and argued that the “ Separate Car Act ” violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Judge John Howard Ferguson of the District of Orleans parish presided over Plessy’s trial. Having previously declared the Separate Car Act “unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states,” Judge Ferguson found Plessy guilty for the crime of having refused to leave the whites-only car. Plessy decided to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, but that court upheld Ferguson’s opinion. Plessy then decided to take his case to the United States Supreme Court. He appealed for an order forbidding Louisiana in the person of Judge Ferguson from carrying out the conviction. On April 13, 1896, in Washington, D.C., Plessy’s lawyers argued before the court that Louisiana had violated Plessy’s Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. On May 18, almost one month later, the Court issued its decision. It upheld the Louisiana law. “The object of the [Fourteenth] Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of the things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting and even requiring their separation in places where they are liable to be brought in contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The distinction between laws interfering with the political equality of the Negro and those requiring the separation of the two races in schools, theatres, and railway carriages, has been frequently drawn by this court . . . In this connection, it is also suggested by the learned counsel for the plaintiff in error that the same argument that will justify the state legislature in requiring railways to provide separate accommodations for the two races will also authorize them to require separate cars to be provided for people whose hair is of a certain color, or who are aliens, or who belong to certain nationalities, or to enact laws requiring colored people to walk upon one side of the street, and white people upon the other, or requiring white men’s houses to be painted white, and colored men’s black, or their vehicles or business signs to be different colors, upon the theory that one side of the street is as good as the other, or that a house or vehicle of one color is as good as one of another color. The reply to all this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable, and extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class . . . So far, then, as a conflict with the 14th Amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order. We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with the badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the Negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet on terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s merits and a voluntary consent of individuals . . . Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuation the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane . . . The judgment of the court below is therefore affirmed.” Sometimes in history, events of great importance happen unexpectedly to modest men. Such was the case of Oliver Brown, whose only desire was that his children be able to attend the public school closest to home. His desire resulted in a fundamental transformation of race relations in the United States. Brown lived in Topeka, Kansas, where he worked as a welder for a railroad. Brown’s family literally lived on the wrong side of the tracks: their house was close to Brown’s place of work, and the neighborhood bordered on a major switchyard. Not only could the Brown family hear the trains day and night, but because the Topeka school system was segregated, the Brown children had to walk through the switchyard to get to the black school a mile away. There was another school only seven blocks away, but it was exclusively for white children. When his daughter Linda was to enter the third grade, Brown took her to the whites-only school and tried to enroll her. He was tired of seeing his daughter forced to go to a school far from her home simply because she was black. The principal of the white school refused to enroll Brown’s daughter. Brown needed help and he knew exactly where to go. The NAACP, or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wanted to challenge segregation for quite some time, but they never had a case that would bring such a change about. That is until Brown. In June 1951, the court tried the case. Expert witnesses testified that segregated schools were unequal because separation sent the message to black children that they were inferior. This fact could never be eliminated from segregated schools. The Board of Education had many likely arguments. None of which convinced the judges. “There is a tendency for us to live up to, or perhaps I should say down to, social expectations and to learn what people say we can learn, and legal segregation definitely depresses the Negro’s expectancy and is therefore prejudicial to his learning.” On August 3, 1951, the court issued its decision. The three judges noted that the leading Supreme Court opinion on public school segregation was the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy legitimized the doctrine of “ separate but equal” school systems for blacks and whites, and Plessy had not been overturned by the Supreme Court or even seriously questioned, despite some nibbling away at the doctrine’s edges in a few recent cases. Therefore, regardless of the experts’ testimony that separate-but-equal schools were impossible, the court felt compelled to deny Brown and the other plaintiffs their request for an injunction. The plaintiffs filed a petition for appeal; they were directly to the Supreme Court. The Court announced its decision on May 17, 1954. The Court endorsed the central thesis that segregation was unequal no matter how much effort the school systems made to ensure that black and white schools had equivalent facilities, staffing, books, buses and so forth. The Court was ready to declare that all segregation in public schools was unconstitutional: “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.” After nearly 60 years of legalized discrimination, the Court threw out Plessy v. Ferguson. It would take another 20 years for the Court’s decision to be fully implemented, however, long after the death of Oliver Brown. In 1955, the Court said that all American school systems were to desegregate “ with all deliberate speed,” but most local schools in the South did nothing until they were brought to court one by one. The process dragged on throughout the rest of the 1950s, during the ‘60s, and into the early ‘70s. Meanwhile, particularly during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Court acted to strike down all the other forms of legal segregation in American society, from bus stations and public libraries to restrooms. The process was painful and often violent, frequently accompanied by federal intervention and mass demonstrations. By the 1970s, however, legal desegregation was a fact. Brown v. Board of Education not only made it possible to demolish segregated school systems, but it was the landmark that served as a medium for further anti-discrimination decision by the Supreme Court.