Dbq Reconstruction Research Paper

1877 saw the end of Reconstruction in the USA with the situation of African-Americans looking to be more positive as they had just gained the right to vote in 1870 with the 15th amendment and gained equal protection under the law with the 14th but still suffered terrible amounts of discrimination in the North and the South. The ‘Black situation’ in 1900 was that the legal, social, economic and political status of blacks was inferior throughout the USA, especially in the South.
One way in which you could argue for the assertion is with white opposition, in particular the KKK. The main opposition by whites was through lynching as there was over 3,000 accounts of lynching taking place between 1880 and 1930 with the majority on sketchy, unproven
The clan was significant in the lynching as a lot of its members, who were law enforcement officials, politicians etc., and so there weren’t going to be any concrete changes (e.g. no changes in litigation). This impeded the civil rights movement but also it is argued by historians such as Adam Fairclough that it was the blacks who protested against lynching were ‘the starting point of the modern civil rights struggle – the beginning of the fightback against white supremacy’. The key figures in this were: Ida B. Wells with the black women’s clubs and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This showed that the KKK was actually increasing the awareness of the plight of the blacks in some way. What the KKK did have a big influence on was that, due to the fear of speaking out and angering the KKK, the blacks were split on
CORE); similarities between Hitler’s racism and Southern racism was identified and there was increased migration from Southern farms. All these factors can be seen to contribute to the advancement of black civil rights.
In conclusion, the difference from 1877 to 1945 was slight as there were still Jim Crow laws in the South with the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 still resonating; there was still discrimination in the North. However there was a slow increase in economic opportunities, black activism and the Federal government were slightly more interested. The biggest increase can be seen with the black consciousness. These factors show that there has been improvement of black civil rights but not by much so there was still a lot to be done so there was an improvement but only slightly as discrimination was still