Although the Black population had been freed with the emancipation proclamation, they were not on actual equal footing with the white population. "No sir...we were not given a thing but freedom." (1)
Ku klux klan
The Ku Klux Klan (or KKK for short) was founded in 1866 in Tennessee as a social group with strong anti- black sentiments, the name Ku Klux Klan is derived from the Greek word Kluklos which means circle and Klan being an alliterative of clan, thus implying that Ku Klux Klan suggested a circle, close knit group, or band of brothers(4). There were a myriad of reasons as to why the KKK posed such a huge threat to the freedmen, whether it be to their goal of attaining an education to help them better themselves, or to their very wellbeing, the Klan did everything in their power to keep the freedmen and the republican agenda as a whole from gaining momentum. The main occurrences that the KKK perpetrated was the killing of republican officials that supported the freedmen agenda, the burning of churches, schools, and houses that were used/occupied by freedmen or those that would aid them(3). Even with the KKK terrorizing most of the of the freedmen ( the Georgia area being the area with the highest amount of KKK activity) the freedmen refused to shy away from confrontation, they would rebuild the schools and churches that were destroyed, the teachers that were attacked, but not killed by the KKK usually went back to work in the schools so that the freedmen's children could still attain an education.
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Black Codes
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the bargain (compromise) of 1877
The bargain of 1877 was an unwritten deal that ended and intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election and it was what officially ended reconstruction in the south. The Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes won the white house (the presidency) over the democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden, for this to happen, the deal was that Hayes would remove the federal troops that were patrolling the Confederate states and that he appoint at least one Southern Democrat to Hayes Cabinet and in return the Democrats would peacefully accept Hayes's presidency and to start showing due respect to the free black population. Of the conditions that were listed before, the only one that was never fully met was to show due respect to the black population, that instead was handled by the "Redeemer" Democrats that whose goal was to keep in place the status quo of the black population being inferior to that of the white. Naturally this led to the a sort of disenfranchisement of the black population with the Redeemers allowing Confederates that were removed by the north to be allowed to take back their positions, thus nullifying whatever progress the north had made.
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