Legally Free, Socially Bound

Sign for the "colored" waiting room at a bus station in Durham, North Carolina, 1940.  Jim Crow laws, established after Reconstruction, lasted until 1965.

In 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This Proclamation freed slaves in the southern states at war with the North. Two years later, the 13th amendment of the U.S. Constitution outlawed slavery in the United States. In 1868 the 14th amendment granted full U.S. citizenship to African-Americans, and the 15th amendment, ratified in 1870, extended the right to vote to black males. Together these amendments were known as the Reconstruction Amendments.

After the Union victory over the Confederacy, a brief period of progress followed for African Americans in the South. From 1865 to 1877, under protection of Union troops, some strides were made toward equal rights for African-Americans. Southern black men began to vote and were elected to the United States Congress, as well as local offices such as sheriff. Coalitions of white and black Republicans passed bills to establish the first public school systems in most states of the South, although sufficient funding was hard to find. Blacks established their own churches, towns, and businesses. Tens of thousands migrated to Mississippi for the chance to clear and own their own land, as 90% of the bottomlands were undeveloped. By the end of the century, two-thirds of the farmers who owned land in the Mississippi Delta bottomlands were black. Tens of thousands of African Americans from the North left homes and careers and also migrated to the defeated South, building schools, printing newspapers, and opening businesses.

After the end of Reconstruction in 1877, African-American Southerners fared less well. The Jim Crow lawsThe Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy. were enacted on the state and local levels between 1876 and 1965, and mandated de jureDe jure is an expression that means "concerning law," as contrasted with de facto, which means "concerning fact." The terms de jure and de facto are used instead of "in law" and "in practice," respectively, when one is describing political or legal situations. segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans (Figure 1). In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were significantly inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. While legally the Reconstruction Amendments had granted African Americans certain legal rights, in social practice they remained second-class citizens and were subject to discrimination and violence.

In the face of mounting violence and intimidation directed at blacks—as well as whites sympathetic to their cause—the U.S. government retreated from its pledge to guarantee constitutional protections to freed men and women. When President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew Union troops from the South in 1877, white Democratic southerners acted quickly to reverse the groundbreaking advances of Reconstruction. To reduce black voting and regain control of state legislatures, Democrats had used a combination of violence, fraud, and intimidation since the election of 1868. These techniques were prominent among paramilitary groups such as the White League and Red Shirts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida prior to the 1876 elections.