Tattered Remains: System of Sharecropping
At first, the Freedman's Bureau grants land from abandoned plantations to thousands of black families, but the "gift" is only temporary as most of the land is returned to its former owners. Northerners assume that a free labor system will emerge in ...
Tattered Remains: Southern Economy, The
In an effort to diversify the economy in the years after the Civil War, Southern industry does expand. However, new jobs in the Alabama steel industry or the textile industries in the Carolinas are generally limited to white workers. Some blacks do ...
Tattered Remains: Horror of Lynching, The
Lynching is a brutal form of oppression intended to silence, intimidate and terrorize African-Americans as well as a few other groups in the South that some whites believe must be kept in their place. The incidence of lynchings is greater in states ...
Tattered Remains: Emergence of the Ku Klux Klan
During the Grant administration interest in Reconstruction fades as the North becomes preoccupied with its own problems. Before Grant leaves office in 1876 Democrats redeem seven of he eleven former Confederate states. It is a setting in which terro...
Master and Slave: Slave Resistance
From the time they leave Africa; slaves resist their captive state. Actual rebellions are rare, in part because the vast majority of the population is white and free. In a one-year time frame in the early 1830s two significant events occur: the init...
Master and Slave: Peculiar Institution, The
A slave is legally defined as property, a subordinate position enforced by violence. Although unfree labor is primarily used in the field of agriculture, almost 20% work in cities or towns as skilled artisans, sometimes earning enough to buy their o...
Other America, The: Civil Rights Movement Intensifies
The black community begins to challenge the constraints segregation imposes. A new mass-based political movement begins to coalesce among black members of urban southern churches. Martin Luther King emerges as chief spokesman and black women as the ...
Fallout: Fair Deal Revived, The
With a Democratic majority in Congress, Truman revives a few of the Fair Deal programs. The minimum wage is raised from 40 to 75 cents an hour, but Congress rejects national health insurance and civil rights legislation, limiting Truman to what he c...
Tattered Remains: Challenges of Rebuilding Southern Society
The South faces enormous challenges after the Civil War, mainly how to reconstitute its economic and social base without slavery. The responsibility for resolving these issues falls to the Republicans. At first, many white males are excluded from vo...
Restless Society: Battle for Racial Equality
During the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy promises to end segregation with stroke of a pen. His inaction once he is elected fuels the disillusionment of African Americans. Their attempt to desegregate Birmingham turns out masses of prot...