The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Federal Protections

The Compromise of 1876–1877 withdrew military and other federal protections from African Americans in the eleven so-called reconstructed Southern states that had formed the Confederacy. Even before then, post–Civil War (1861–1865) reforms had failed to restrain vengeful and violent white suppression of blacks. The Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments to the US Constitution had not changed the hearts, minds, or practices of pro-slavery rebels; nor did federal enforcement legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Voting Rights Act of 1870, or the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

The Rise of Racial Terror

The Ku Klux Klan, founded in December 1865, relentlessly assaulted black freedom along with other marauding whites. The May 1866 massacre of blacks in Memphis, followed two months later by white mobs in New Orleans, portended continuous violence to suppress black freedom. The three-day Memphis rampage of arson, rape, and murder left at least forty-six blacks dead and black schools, businesses, churches, and homes destroyed. The horrific mass violence signaled white Southerners’ intransigence and unwillingness to admit blacks to civil, economic, and social rights.

Judicial Sanction of White Supremacy

Popular city and countryside anti-black suppression drew increasing strength from state and federal court decisions. The 1873 US Supreme Court ruling in The Slaughter-House Cases signaled the narrowing reach of federal law, as it left states in charge of recognizing and protecting personal rights. The Court’s 1876 decision in US v. Cruikshank further entrenched this states’ rights policy. It effectively sanctioned the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana, where a white mob slaughtered more than 100 black men to overturn election results and seize control of the local government. Subsequent rulings—Hall v. DeCuir (1878) and The Civil Rights Cases (1881)—eliminated state and federal anti-discrimination measures, further emboldening white supremacists.

Institutionalizing Black Disenfranchisement

With federal intervention effectively eliminated, Southern states systematically stripped African Americans of civil, economic, and social rights. Mississippi led the way with its 1890 state constitution, instituting grandfather clauses, literacy tests, poll taxes, and restrictive residency provisions to bar blacks from voting or even registering to vote. It also barred blacks from owning or possessing guns, aiming to cut their ability to protect themselves against rampant white violence.

The Terror of Lynching and Racial Violence

Mississippi also led the surge of lynchings that brutally symbolized black repression. Crusading investigative journalist Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) exposed the horror of lynching in her 1892 publication Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Between 1882 and 1890, white mobs in the South lynched 534 blacks; in the 1890s, they lynched another 1,111 blacks.

Other Southern states quickly adopted Mississippi’s measures, and the US Supreme Court confirmed the white supremacists’ successes in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision and the 1898 Williams v. Mississippi decision. The first cemented so-called separate-but-equal practices that formed the basis of expanding racist segregation; the second eliminated black challenges to states restricting voting rights.

Massacres and the Final Betrayal of Reconstruction

The November 1898 Wilmington Massacre in North Carolina exemplified the consequences of unchecked white supremacy. Refusing to accept the election of a biracial coalition, a white mob seized control of the city government, killing upwards of 300 blacks, burning black businesses and homes, and forcing more than 2,000 to flee. The five days of white assaults, arson, looting, rape, and murder in the July 1900 New Orleans riots showed similar repression of blacks. In that year whites lynched 106 blacks.

The Legacy of Resistance and the Road to Civil Rights

By the end of the nineteenth century, Southern white aggression and Northern white indifference had succeeded in denying the post-Civil War promises of equal protection of the laws and full citizenship for African Americans. White supremacy reigned unchecked. Yet African Americans persisted in their struggle. They organized to fight racial discrimination and to end inequities, lynching, and other racial violence. The twentieth century would see segregation outlawed and a surge in black civil, cultural, political, and social influence in the United States.