Through out history African-Americans have always been segregated and mistreated by society. Two of the most prominent times in history where African-Americans were mistreated were during the reconstruction period and during Civil Rights Movement. The reconstruction period occurred from 1865 through 1877 while the Civil Rights Movement occurred during the 1950’s and 60’s. Though these two periods in history occurred many decades apart African-Americans were continuously treated with the same disdain.
The reconstruction period was the period after the Civil War when the southern states were reorganized and reinstated into the Union. This time period spanned from 1865-1877. During this time black codes were put into affect; these codes limited the basic human rights and civil liberties of African-Americans. Some of these codes required African-Americans to pass a literacy test and pay poll taxes in order to vote. These codes were mainly implemented in the southern United States because even though the Confederates did not win the war, they still supported the idea of slavery. In 1866, only a year after the beginning of the reconstruction period, the Ku Klux Klan was formed in Pulaski, Tennessee. The KKK’s main purpose was mainly to intimidate African-Americans and white supporters of the Republican Party. Acts of violence from the KKK towards African-Americans occurred frequently through out the reconstruction period. Law enforcement attempted to control the violence but was not always successful. Jonathan Bryant states, in The New Georgia Encyclopedia, that there were“336 cases of murder or assault with intent to kill on freedmen across the state from January 1 through November 15 of 1868”.
By 1955 the African-American’s tolerance of segregation had reached an end. The civil rights movement began when an African-American woman named Rosa Parks was arrested because she refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white man. This event sparked other people like Martin Luther King Jr. to take action against segregation and push toward equal rights. Unlike the reconstruction period law enforcement did not protect the rights of African-Americans, in fact they enforced segregation laws. One of the most well known cases were law enforcement did not protect African-Americans was the murders of James Chaney (an African-American), Andrew Goodman, and Schwerner. On June 21, 1964 these three men were arrested on a false speeding charge and incarcerated for the remainder of the day. Later that night the Neshoba County's law enforcement illegally handed the men over to the Ku Klux Klan who proceeded to murder them. Unlike the African-American in the reconstruction period the African-Americans of the 1950’s and 60’s organized non-violent protests such as the boycott of Montgomery bus systems and sit-ins at restaurants that refused service to African-Americans. These anti-segregation protests were effective because African-Americans stood up for what they believed in and eventually began the process of implicating equal rights.As you can see there were many similarities between the treatment of African-Americans through out the reconstruction period and the civil rights movements. Both the reconstruction period and the civil rights movement were times that were very difficult for African-Americans. The biggest difference between the civil rights movement and the reconstruction period was that foe the first time in history African-American had joined together to taken action against segregation and fight for equal rights.
Resource:
Bryant, Jonathan. "Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era ." Athens: 2002. Web. <http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694>.
Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Ku_Klux_Klan_Virgina_1922_Parade.jpg
