Name
Professor
Course
Date
POST-RECONSTRUCTION ERA
Reconstruction era refers to the phase following the American civil war from 1865 to 1877. During this period, the United States scuffled with the defiance of re-merging the thirteen states into a union and ascertaining African- Americans’ admissible status. The reconstruction aimed to re-organize southern states after the civil war, incorporating them into the union and regulating the relationship between the blacks and the whites in a non-slave society (Perrone & Giuliana, 161).
The post-reconstruction era was ushered by state bargain to procure southern support in the presidential general election in 1877. The state armed forces were relinquished from the south, and the Caucasian democrats resumed political influence in each southern state. Jim Crow laws that discriminated against the blacks from whites were amended, giving the blacks equal rights with the whites (Frampton & Thomas,1654).
Post-reconstruction challenges to the African-Americans
Racial discrimination; although Jim Crow laws prohibited racial discrimination in public amenities, the laws were not adhered to in the south by the whites. The court system further ruled racial discrimination cases in favor of the whites.
Right to vote, African-Americans had the right to vote and even elect their representatives to the congress; however, changes occurred in the 1890s, and the states from the south created several ways to forbade black people from voting.
Denial to full citizenship; African-white Southerners forced Americans into second-class citizenship, which had limited rights.
Booker T. Washington versus W.E.B. Du Bois perspectives
Booker T. and W.E.B. Dubois were two prolific leaders of the Africa-Americans community in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The two leaders contradicted on the blueprint for social and economic advancement for African-Americans.
Booker T., the instigator of Tuskegee Institute’s, a reformer, and a prominent African-American leader (1856-1915), spread self-help, accommodation, and racial togetherness ideologies. He conceived that blacks have to focus on empowering themselves economically instead of demanding social equality and civil rights. According to Booker, African- Americans would only earn respect from the whites and gain full acceptance if they are skilled in crafts, farming, and industries. In his Atlanta speech in 1895, Washington showed an apparent affirmation of exclusion. His coconspirator position on African-American social equality and civil rights became known as the Atlanta compromise.
On the other hand Du Bois in his work “the souls of black folks (1903),” criticized Booker T. philosophy. He argued that black education should not be limited to learning a trade but allow blacks to access higher education. He believed that access to higher education would lead to the emergence of African-American elites who would fight for blacks’ rights and equality through the ballot box and through protest where the ballot’s casting does not work (Green et al., 78).
Works cited
Frampton, Thomas Ward. “The Jim Crow Jury.” Vanderbilt Law Review, vol. 71, no. 5, 2018, pp. 1593–1654.
Green, Dan S, and Wortham, Robert A. “The Sociological Insight of W.E.B. Du Bois.” Sociological Inquiry, vol. 88, no. 1, 2018, pp. 56–78.
Perrone, Giuliana. “‘Back into the Days of Slavery’: Freedom, Citizenship, and the Black Family in the Reconstruction-Era Courtroom.” Law and History Review, vol. 37, no. 1, 2019, pp. 125–161.