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African Americans held high office in the South during Reconstruction, thought the number of such officials was small relative to the African American population. African Americans were, after all, a majority in Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. One African American, P.B.S. Pinchback, briefly served as governor of Louisiana. Six African Americans were lieutenant governors, and several others held high state office. Meanwhile, sixteen Africn Americans went to congress and Hiram Revels, an educator and minister, became a United States senator from Mississippi in 1870. Mississippi also sent former sherrif Blanche K. Bruce to the senate in 1874. In addition, 600 African Americans were members of various state legislatures and hundreds of others held local offices. While some were illiterate-70 percent of African Americans could not read or write in 1880, compared to under 10 percent of whites-many were educated and virtually all were capable of making informed judgments about major issues. Many southern whites criticized the presence of African Americans in reconstruction governments. They accused African Americans of being corrupt or incompetent. In reality, the South’s African American officials appeared to have been no worse or no better than their white counterparts. Many served with distinction. State governments controlled by Republicans did bring change to the South. They committed state governments to systems of public education, although these systems were divided along racial lines. They passed civil rights legislation that guaranteed African Americans access to transportation and hotels, though this legislation was largely unenforced. In addition they repealed black codes and removed restrictions on African American workers. Economic Development. Republicans focused much of their effort on improving economic conditions. Some argued that lasting change could not come tot he region without land redistribution. In other words, African Americans would never gain equal rights or independence until they owned property. Most white republicans, however, were unwilling to take such a step, which would have involved taking the land of planters and giving it to people who had been enslaved. This would have violated southerners’ constitutional right to security of private property. Instead, most white republicans concentrated on economic development. Advocating “the gospel of prosperity,” they contended that the key to better times was more railroads, banks, and businesses. Southern governments aided in this development with grants, paid for out of higher taxes. But while thousands of miles of railroad tracks were laid, government aid did little to improve general economic conditions. Most African Americans, and not a few whites, remained mired in poverty. Voter Anger. Republican rule alienated many white voters. Taxes and state debts increased because of expenses such as grants to railroads. As in the North, state officials sometimes accepted bribes, leading to charges of corruption. In addition, the policies seemed to do little to improve economic conditions, though in fact, few policies would have made much difference in the war scarred southern economy. Moreover, worldwide demand for cotton was falling. The 1875 cotton crop equaled that of 1859 in terms of size but not in profits. Changes in southern agriculture. Devastated by the Civil War, southern planters never recovered the dominance that they had enjoyed before the war. Some sought to re-create the past by finding ways to preserve slavery in a new form. As the economic journal De Bow’s review argued in 1868, we do not mean … slavery such as that which has been recently abolished, but some form of subordination of the inferior race that shall compel them to labor, whilst it protects their rights and provides for their wants. Debt Peonage. To achieve this end, planters signed former slaves to labor contracts. Under the terms of these contracts, planters advanced money to laborers in return for signed promises from the workers that they all pay debts before they moved on. Planters then found ways to increase workers’ debts while keeping them ignorant of any escape. Year after year, laborers remained bound to work off debts that always got larger. Though slavery was dead, in debt peonage, as this system of forced labor came to be called, the South brought some aspects of the slave system back to life. Sharecropping. Many freed people wanted no part of contract agreements for their labor. In order to make money from their fields, white landowners began to rent their land to African Americans and poor whites. In one common system, farmers called sharecroppers grew a crop on land owned by someone else. In return for the use of the land and supplies such as seed and fertilizer, the farmer gave one third to one half of the annual crop to the landowner. Others, called tenant farmers, paid cash for the rentalof land. They typically agreed to sell their crop to a local merchant, who gave them use of tools and supplies in advance of harvest. By 1880 one third of the white farmers in the south were sharecroppers or tenant farmers. When African Americans had grown 90 percent of the cotton before the Civil War, now cultivated 30-40 percent. African American sharecroppers and tenant farmers enjoyed more practical freedom than they had possessed as enslaved people. They controlled their own schedules, determined where they lived, and worked without white supervision. Yet the sharecropping and tenancy systems had serious drawbacks. Low cotton prices that had troubled landowners also made it hard for sharecroppers to earn enough money to survive. Many had to borrow from local stores for food and supplies, creating debts that grew larger and farmers were trapped in a continuous effort to pay off their debts, just like farmers working under the system of debt peonage. Whites attack Reconstruction Bibliography: Between 1867 and 1869, approximately 1,000 men attended state constitutional conventions throughout the South. Some 265 of them were African Americans: at least 107 were former slaves. Word Count: 973
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