United States History Student Edition

sharecropping and the heavy reliance on a single cash crop helped prevent improvements in the conditions of Southern farmers. 7 CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING 1. Citing Text Evidence Who helped Southern Democrats regain local power? How? 2. Describing Why did Southern industry grow in the late 1800s? Rights Are Lost GUIDING QUESTION Why did freedom for African Americans become a distant dream after Reconstruction ended? As Reconstruction ended, African Americans’ dreams for justice faded. Laws passed by the redeemer governments denied Southern African Americans many of their newly won rights. Some African Americans chose to move away from the South and pursue new lives in other areas, such as the American West. Denying the Vote and Jim Crow The Fifteenth Amendment barred a state from denying someone the right to vote because of race. White Southern leaders, however, found ways to get around the amendment. One way was by requiring a poll tax , a fee required for voting. Many African Americans could not afford to pay the tax, so they could not vote. Another means of denying voting rights was the literacy test (LIH•tuh•ruh•see TEHST). This approach required potential voters to read and explain difficult parts of state constitutions or the federal Constitution. Because most Southern African Americans had little education, literacy tests prevented many from voting. To prevent poll taxes and literacy tests from keeping poor, uneducated whites from voting, some states passed grandfather clauses (GRAND•fah•thuhr KLAHZ•ihz). These laws allowed people to vote if their fathers or grandfathers had voted before Reconstruction. poll tax a tax a person must pay in order to vote literacy test a method used to prevent people from voting by requiring them to read and write at a certain level grandfather clause a provision allowing people to vote if their fathers or grandfathers had voted before Reconstruction began The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.

By 1880, one-third of the South’s farmers were sharecroppers or tenant farmers.

Because Southern African Americans could not vote until 1867, they were excluded. Such laws and the constant threat of violence caused African American voting to decline sharply. By the late 1800s, segregation had become common across the South. Segregation (seh•grih•GAY•shuhn) is separation of the races. Southern states passed so-called Jim Crow laws that required African Americans and whites to be separated in almost every public place. In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld segregation laws in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson . The Court ruled that segregation was legal as long as African Americans had access to public places equal to those of whites. Violence against African Americans rose. One form of violence was lynching (LIHN•cheeng), in which angry mobs killed people by hanging them. Some African Americans were lynched because they were suspected of crimes—others because they did not act as whites thought they should. Exodusters and Buffalo Soldiers Formerly enslaved people began to leave the South during Reconstruction. They called themselves “Exodusters.” This name came from the biblical book of Exodus, which describes the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt. segregation the separation or isolation of a race, class, or group; separation of one group from another lynch to put to death by the illegal action of a mob, usually by hanging

Reconstruction 489