Many Black colleges and universities were founded after Reconstruction. An Army officer, General O.O. Howard, head of the Freedman’s Bureau, founded Howard University in Washington, D.C. Some other schools founded during the Reconstruction period are Fisk University in Nashville, Atlanta University, Hampton Institute in Virginia, Talladega College in Alabama, Tougaloo College in Mississippi, Morgan College in Baltimore, Knoxville College and Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
By 1870, approximately 150,000 Black people were enrolled in Southern schools. They attended classes at night, studying by the light of candles and oil lamps. Twenty years later, a million students were taught by trained white instructors from the North. Many white teachers were suspected by the white Southerners of teaching social equality to Black students. As a result, a large number of schools were burned and the teachers were forced to return North. In other Southern cities, white women taught Black children and encouraged them to aspire to higher achievements.
Black people hungered for education but they were faced with the more immediate problem of earning a living. After President Johnson restored Southern land to white ex-Confederates, they had land but no money or labor to develop it. Northern bankers had investment capital, and Black labor was abundant. The South was faced with how to bring together the land, the money, and labor.
Sharecropping was the South’s answer to the problem. The bankers lent the farmer’s money to purchase equipment and food for the Black workers. Sharecropping bound Black families to the land and white landowners. The landowner took a lien against the tenant farmer’s share of the crop. When the accounts were settled after harvest, the sharecropper was supposed to share the profits that remained after the crop was sold. Most of the tenants were illiterate and told their account was overdrawn due to advances. As a result, they were deeper in debt to the landowner. To wipe out the debt, the tenant was required to make a crop for the same landowner the next year. By the time the second year’s crop was harvested, the tenant was deeper in debt. If a tenant tried to leave the farm without paying this high debt, he and his family could be jailed and fined. The fines were paid by sending the tenant back to the same farm to work off the fine.
Almost all Black people in the South were agricultural workers. Without land on their own, they had to depend on white landowners for work. The bonds of debt peonage replaced the chains of slavery and landowners controlled the labor force.
Much of today’s race problems have roots in the Reconstruction period. The poor whites who had lived in the hills and on less productive land, found their small incomes reduced after the Civil War. They had to compete for jobs with Black people. This increased the bitterness and resentment between poor whites and Blacks.
These problems also occurred before the war. There were competitions between Black artisans, mechanics and poor whites. In 1845, the Georgia legislature barred contracts with Black mechanics. In spite of these attempts, skilled Black people in other areas worked in the production of cotton textiles, tobacco, iron and flour. Artisans were employed as gunsmiths, plasterers, cabinetmakers and other trades.
Segregation caused Southern white people to overlook commonalities shared with Black people. They thought their skin color certified them as being superior. Black people were determined to be treated with dignity and respect. Long standing customs and laws were designed to enforce white supremacy. Many Southern states enacted black codes, limiting the freedom of former slaves and returning them to near slavery.
Francie Mae, June 15, 2021.
Reference
C. Eric Lincoln. November 1967. The Negro Pilgrimage In America. Bantam Pathfinder Books.