HISTORIC BLACK VEGAS: Looking back at Reconstruction

BY CLAYTEE D. WHITE

The eleven-year period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877) followed the Civil War and was once viewed as a progressive era of Black advancement — especially for the enslaved who had been set free. 

But as more valid research has emerged, we are finding that this period was not as fruitful as once thought. Reconstruction brought many freedoms, including the election of the first Blacks to federal, state, and local governments; the Freedmen’s Bureau; 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution; the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and established public schools for Black children and poor white children as well. Blacks voted, owned land, opened more businesses, established additional churches, and began to educate their children. Good times had come. 

However, this period also placed new restrictions upon Black existence. White resistance morphed into a new, even more vicious reality. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, Andrew Johnson, a Southerner and slaveowner, became president. On “day-one,” he began the process of pardoning every confederate traitor who was willing to swear allegiance to the United States. And once they swore allegiance, their land was returned to them! This rescinded Sherman Orders that we know as “40 acres and a mule.” Blacks who held real property for nearly two years lost all of it. 

This shift brought about a period of unrest marked by lynchings and race riots. Terror came from the White League, the White Knights, the Knights of the White Camellia, and the baddest, boldest of them all — the Ku Klux Klan. Michael Harriot, in “Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America,” described the unrest as “an insurrection, ethnic cleansing, and terrorism with a little bit of guerilla warfare mixed in for good measure. To enforce their goals, the loose confederation of historically white fraternities all had one common strategy: killing as many Black people as possible and overthrowing the government that had enabled their freedom.” Many of these incidents of violence were recorded and are maintained in the records of the Freedmen’s Bureau. 

Added to the violence were Black Codes — an extension of Slave Codes that restricted the day-to-day freedoms of African-Americans. These limitations curtailed economic, political, and social advancement. The types of jobs available, the right to vote, property ownership, and movement through public spaces were all narrowed by Black Codes. A graphic example is vagrancy law, which proved much more harsh than many of us realize. An overview of vagrancy laws shows that it was illegal for Blacks to be unemployed or without a home. Remember that employment and property ownership were controlled by whites according to the Black Code of conduct. The “vagrants” could be arrested, fined, forced to work for free, assigned to a chain gang, auctioned off to work on a “former” plantation, forced to work on a public project, or confined to jail and fed only bread and water. These codes/laws reduced Black Americans to second-class citizens. 

Those of us who were taught about Reconstruction learned that sixteen Black men served in Congress — and that among them were Hiram Revels of Mississippi as the first Black U.S. Senator in 1870 , ollowed by Blanche Bruce. The next Black man in the Senate was Edward Brooke of Massachusetts in 1967. We also learned about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution that ended slavery, granted equal protection under the law, and extended the vote to Black men. But we failed to read the entire chapter that rolled back these rights within mere months, although the constitution was not amended. 

Reconstruction ended in 1877 when Northern troops were pulled out of the South — a compromise with white southern leaders that allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to become president. Hayes’ campaign agreed that if he, and not Samuel Tilden, was elected in the disputed election of 1876, then Hayes would release the protection that the military offered Blacks and send the troops back to their homes in the North. Hayes stole the election, became president, and allowed the soldiers to leave the South — abandoning the little protections that they had afforded to Blacks. 

Officially, Black Codes morphed into Jim Crow laws, and were ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is one vivid timeline that proves, once and for all time, the legacy of slavery. 

(To ensure a more robust look at this period in American history, I plan to follow this research over the next three months with The Civil Rights Act of 1866, The Freedmen’s Bureau, Forty Acres and a Mule, and a look at Nevada during Reconstruction.)