The Civil Rights
The Civil Rights Act 1875 was enacted on March 1, 1875, to affirm the equality of all people before the regulation and prohibited existed racial discrimination in public places, including facilities like public transportation and restaurants. This landmark legislation was introduced by Charles Sumner, a Radical Republican senator of Massachusetts, as an amendment to an overall amnesty bill for the former Confederates.
The Civil Rights Act 1875 criminalized any facilitation of the denial of such services or accommodations on the race, color, or previous state of servitude basis. According to Hine et al. (2010), the overall lawsuits that aroused under the Civil Rights Act had been tried in the federal courts, instead of state level, but the act was not often enforced. Although few observers anticipated the law to change the dominant racial attitudes upheld by both Southern and Northern whites, the legislation was designed to protect the African Americans from deprivation of citizenship minimal rights.
Considering the terms, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, as the United States legislation, that was also the last of the main Reconstruction statutes, guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations together with public transportation on juries. However, conferring to Hine et al. (2010), the United States Supreme Court stated the legislation as unconstitutional in some Civil Rights Cases of 1883. On the long-term outcome of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 passage, segregation continued across the South despite the Congressional Republicans passing the act as part of the great effort to suppress white extremism in the South.
Nevertheless, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 had unsuccessful impacts after the Supreme Court declared that the existed public discrimination could no longer be prohibited through legislation since such discrimination appeared private, contrary to state law. According to Hine et al. (2010), African Americans were recognized as non-United States citizens and consequently could not have legal right to sue in the federal court. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was designed to tolerate all people to enjoy equal access to the public accommodation services and transportation, the law had very minimal influence on the South.
Qn5.
During deterioration of economic, social, and political conditions, the survival options the blacks possessed in the South in the late 1800s was at first accepting Sharecropping and formation of Black conventions. Sharecropping, together with tenant farming, had been a convenient form in the renowned cotton South in the 1800s amongst whites and blacks. The Sharecropping came into extensive use in the South of the United States in the Reconstruction era between 1865 to1877 (Hine et al., 2010). The leaders of African Americans recognized the implication of forming and sustaining African American national organizations that could be built upon existed local political networks. The Black convention movement was central to such organizations.
The South of the U.S. had been overwhelmed by the civil war, and the planters had sufficient land without enough money for taxes and wages. The landowners offered sharecroppers with the land, tools, seeds, food, and clothing. The supplies charges were then deducted from the harvest portion of the sharecroppers, parting them with considerable debt to landowners in weak harvest years (Hine et al., 2010). The sharecroppers were caught up in recurrent debt, especially during such weak harvests. It is evident that as sharecropping provided African Americans autonomy in the social lives and daily work while freeing them from the prior gang-labor system which dominated the slavery era, it often resulted in the sharecroppers owing extra to the landowners.
Many national, state, local Black conventions in the 1800s reveals precisely how the African Americans sought to protect their human rights as other American residents in the public scope (Hine et al., 2010). The conventions were among the broader political setting of mass meetings, whether recognized conferences or public meetings in the local Black churches, which offered the required space through which the Black popular politics may perhaps operate. The earlier meetings had mainly focused on slavery abolition. According to Hine et al. (2010), the conventions later claimed for land reform, equal educational opportunities in the 1850s.
Eventually, the laws that favored landowners made it hostile for sharecroppers to retail their crops to the other people other than the landlords, while preventing sharecroppers from moving away when indebted to their landlords. Besides, the most common reactions blacks demonstrated while facing the challenges were during the Reconstruction period, whereby the need to protect equal civil and political rights came at the frontline of the conventioneers’ discussion (Hine et al., 2010). By the period white Democrats had reclaimed control of the whole legislatures from the southern state, the convention’s emphasis had moved toward a dependence on racial solidarity and self-help through economic advancement and education.
Qn6.
In the 1800s, the racial-segregation laws and Ku Klux Klan terrorism had fundamentally dominated the south. The Reconstruction of the Civil War failed to affirm the provision of full rights to the freed slaves. The African Americans during this era desperately required an approach to respond effectively to the existed white supremacists. Both W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington became the chief advocates for the Negro rights in this period.
Considering the educational backgrounds of the chief advocates, Booker T. Washington thought primarily in solving African Americans’ problems through their education (Hine et al., 2010). Washington believed that African Americans could educate themselves through investing in their businesses and trades. On the same note, Du Bois still believed in education as the resolution to African Americans’ self-improvement.
On the other hand, however, Du Bois, contrary to Washington, believed that it was important for Africa Americans first to terminate segregation. Besides, according to Hine et al. (2010), Du Bois further criticized Washington for the reception of the existed racial discrimination since the advocate felt that racial discrimination stimulated whites in denying African Americans their rights.
I have faith that the vision of Washington was more persuasive only when it is the final option. During this period, there was no definite resort of dealing with racial segregation without arousing rioting and violence. Hence, revealing to the white leaders, the African Americans’ value in society was a great way forward. The belief of Washington that by improving one-self by working hard, particularly in education, was an ideal resort to demonstrate to the white supremacists the significant impact of African Americans in society.
References
Hine, D. C., Hine, W. C., & Harrold, S. C. (2010). African-American Odyssey: Combined Volume, Books a la Carte Edition. Prentice-Hall.