Reconstruction
Reconstruction was one of the most important parts of American history. It lasted for a few decades, but its implications are still felt in our time in 2013. Class, race, and other factors influenced the history of Reconstruction. Reconstruction began when the Civil War was over in 1865. The South has been devastated by war (It reaped what it has sown). Communities have been displaced. African Americans were legitimately freed from the bondage of slavery. It was a long time coming. New challenges and new debates arose in the American consciousness. A lot of human beings focus just on the 20th century to research the civil rights struggle, but the struggle for civil rights was definitely fought in the time of Reconstruction. You can make the case that the golden era of the civil rights movement (from 1954 to 1968 was like a Second Reconstruction). Now, after the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, which have a huge resonance in the human rights movement. They were the 13th Amendment that ended slavery, the 14th Amendment that gave African Americans citizenship, and the 15th Amendment that gave African Americans males the right to vote (it would be decades later that women would be allowed to vote in the USA). Reconstruction was a time when emancipated slaves or freed brothers and sisters had guns in their hands. They wanted political and social equality. They fought for the redistribution of land and towards political liberty. The old order of the Old South was turned upside down. The land was owned once by big proprietors, whom many of it was stolen from Native Americans. Southern lands were controlled by the federal government and the military, because Southern state governments were extremely weakened as a product of the Civil War.
The military occupied Southern lands until they were on their feet. Abraham Lincoln wanted the South to be united as compassionately as possible while the Radical Republicans wanted justice sent to the South more strongly because of their actions. When Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson was President. He was one of the most prejudiced and racist Presidents in American history. Andrew Johnson was not only a Freemason, but he started to amnestying former slave owners and weeded radicals out of the Freedmen's Bureau. He pardoned the Confederate traitor and 33rd Degree Freemason Albert Pike (who was the author of Morals and Dogma. We know who he is). Andrew Johnson had a very evil, vicious hatred of black people. Andrew Johnson was a former slave-owner. That is why he never liked the link up of poor blacks and whites. Johnson’s amnesty proclamations were an abrogation of Sherman’s Field Order No. 15. Forty thousand freedmen were deprived of 485,000 acres of land. Land is a key portion of true liberation not just political action. The Radical Republicans soon got control for a while for most of Congress and they set much of the tone of Reconstruction. The South was held under military control by Congress. General Grant appointed generals running each district. Former Confederate states had to accept the terms of the Union in order to be readmitted into the USA. Many black Americans wanted 40 acres and a mule. This comes from Sherman’s Special Order No. 15, which he issued in Savannah in 1865, right after he finished his march through Georgia. That order gave 40 acres of abandoned land and also unneeded old Army mules to newly freed black families. In the summer of 1865, the redistribution of abandoned and confiscated land was Freedmen's Bureau policy supported by the military. The Freedmen's Bureau was a federal agency that assisted freed slaves from 1865 to 1872.
It was weaken heavily by 1870. Abraham Lincoln initiated it in 1865. They wanted economic development, agricultural development, and labor rights among black Americans. They wanted legal rights for African Americans. Andrew Johnson tried to cut funds from it and its funding was decreased by 1869. One of the greatest achievements of the Freedman's Bureau was education. African American George Ruby worked as a teacher and as a school administrator including a traveling inspector for the Bureau. He evaluated the performance of Bureau field officers. About 90,000 black Americans were in schools by the end of 1865. Many Republicans dominated Reconstruction governments across the South. The majority of officeholders were white with a significant minority of blacks, based on the support of blacks and some poor whites. Black Republicans became the major focus for political, social and economic justice in the South. Black human beings wanted more political rights, more schools, more land, more hospitals, more debtors’ relief, etc. These things benefited the vast majority of the South, both black and white. Many Black Republicans were in state Congresses all over the Old South indeed. The first African American Congressman was Hiram Revels.
Reconstruction is still a very important historical event. The history of Reconstruction is not the one the movie Gone with the Wind showed. It was not Gone with the Wind fabulous. LOL. Reconstruction outlined an experience of democracy in the South. Reconstruction was a political struggle between nearly freed Black slaves in the South and the oppressor. Early Reconstruction from 1865 to 1867 was no real liberty based reality at all. Many Confederate states were admitted to the Congress with hardly any reservations at all. Many of the planter class maintained their power and privilege. They used violence and the Black Codes, which was nothing more than a continuation of the old slave system. Radical Reconstruction was advanced by numerous Radical Republicans and revolutionary African Americans. Black human beings wanted political and social equality. Many former abolitionists and Northern labor activists feared that the Johnson plan restored slavery with a new face. Northerner capitalists influenced the federal government during the Civil War. Activists and the Freeman fought for some reforms. In the period from 1867 to 1877, there were about 2,000 African Americans holding political office. There were black Senators and House of Representative in that period of time as well. Southern Blacks and poor whites voted for Radical Reconstruction governments. The South soon was more democratized in its state constitutions. There was a system of free and universal public education, penal reforms came, greater rights were given to women, and there were some public welfare institutions. This was without precedent in the South. Giving a freedman 40 acres and a mule did not pass in the South. Land reform and redistribution did not exist since some of the Northern capitalists turned against Reconstruction. The elite banks fought workers wanting an 8 hour day, farmers, and Molly Maguires (fighting for the workers in the mines). So, the ruling class in the North and South worked together in harming black liberty with their Compromise of 1877. That compromise was one of the worst events in the history of the black liberation struggle. It allowed federal troops to be withdrawn from the South. Black rights were violated by violence, intimidation, and fraud. Southern reactionaries ended Reconstruction governments and the achievements of Reconstruction. Economic oppression via sharecropping, etc. ruined the lives of workers in the South. The Dixiecrats and the Northern moderates worked together in trying to block every reform measure that came before Congress even in the 20th century. They or the Dixiecrats fought against child labor, they opposed women's suffrage, they hated income taxes on the rich, etc. They hated real labor rights and social welfare. Even today, the South offers a haven for runaway shops from the North. Reconstruction taught all of us that revolutionary social change must come mixed with political change as a means to help society. Reconstruction was a political time that was short-lived, but its lessons can assist us in our current fight to make a brighter tomorrow for all God's Creation.
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the greatest human rights activists in human history. She led a legacy of diverse activism in the world. Her legacy is very huge. She was born in 1917 in Montgomery, Mississippi. She was the youngest of 20 children. Her family moved into Sunflower County, Mississippi in 1919. Her family worked on the plantation of E.W. Brandon. Hamer picked cotton. By the age of 13, she picked 200-300 pounds on a daily basis. She later became an activist. During the 1950's, Hamer attended several annual conferences of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership or the RCNL in the all black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Dr. T. R.M. Howard was a civil rights leader and a wealthy black entrepreneur. He headed the RCNL. The RCNL conferences featured entertainers like Mahalia Jackson including Thurgood Marshall, and Rep. Charles Diggs of Michigan. They readily discussed issues of voting rights and other civil rights issues. She was forcibly sterilized in 1961 by a white doctor as part of the Mississippi's plan to reduce the number of poor black Americans in the state. She was also inspired to fight for equality and justice by witnessing a sermon made by Rev. James Bevel on August 23, 1962. Rev. Bevel was an organizer for SNCC or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was an associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He gave his sermon in Ruleville, Mississippi and appealed the folks to register to vote. Institutionalized racism, harassment, murder, assaults, and even lynchings came to those black human beings who registered to vote in the South. Hamer was the first volunteer to register. She later said, "I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember." In August 31, Fannie Lou Hamer came to Indianola, Mississippi to register. She was religious. Therefore, she began to sing Christian hymns like "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "This Little Light of Mine" to the group as a means for them to bolster their resolves. Hamer believed that the civil rights struggle was not only a political struggle for freedom, but a deeply spiritual one as well. She expressed a lot of courage in her life, especially in Indianola. SNCC organizer Bob Moses wanted to meet with Fannie Lou Hamer because of her activism. Fannie Lou Hamer was jailed in Winona, Mississippi on a false charge. Her and her colleagues were beaten brutally by the police almost to the point of death. This happened in June 9, 1963. She was released in June 12, yet this still never deterred this strong Black Sister at all. She continued to have voter registration drives like the "Freedom Ballot Campaign", a mock election in 1963, and the "Freedom Summer" initiative in 1964. She was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer - most of whom were young, white, and from northern states - as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature. Sammy Young Jr. and Wendell Paris were allies and worked under Fannie Lou Hamer. Sammy was assassinated in Tuskegee in 1966. Paris continued to work as a community activist in Tuskegee and Mississippi. She is famous for her courage stand for equal representation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party of the Freedom Democrats wanted to challenge the Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of that year (as not representative of all Mississippians). Hamer was elected Vice-Chair. The Freedom Democrats voiced the concerns and expressed words on the plight of African Americans in Mississippi. They wanted representation that could challenge LBJ's nomination process. The reason was that many other Southern delegations could break toward Republican challenger Barry Goldwater. That means in turn that he would almost certainly lose those states' electoral votes in the election.
Fannie Lou Hamer was shown in the media. This angered Johnson and this piece of work Johnson called her a name. So, in the final analysis, no President gave us our freedom. God did and the efforts of human beings did via blood, sweat, and tears. Hamer and the rest of the MFDP told the Convention about their issues that they have encountered with registration. She suffered a lot. Her speech was shown unedited in later news programs despite Johnson's efforts to divert press coverage away from Hamer's testimony. Hamer refused to compromise. Hamer was not part of later negotiations. A new compromise was attempted to be reached. The Convention would select the two delegates to be seated, for fear the MFDP would appoint Hamer. In the end, the MFDP rejected the compromise, but had changed the debate to the point that the Democratic Party adopted a clause which demanded equality of representation from their states' delegations in 1968. This was an important event since it not only showed the fallibility of the Democrats, but it outlined that still representation is still under attack then and now. Fannie Lou Hamer continued to fight for local civil rights causes and the Freedom Democrats. She ran for Congress in 1964 and 1965. She opposed the Vietnam War.
Fannie Lou Hamer continued to fight for human liberation. She spoke in 1964 in the following words: “If the Freedom Democratic Party isn’t seated today, I Question America”, Fannie told the Credentials Committee. “Is this America where we have to sleep with our phones off the hooks because we be threatened daily just cause we want to register to vote to become first class citizens." She was a member of the Mississippi's official delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1968. She was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. She continued to work in activism. She worked in grassroots level Head Start programs, the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. That campaign wanted to give the poor a better chance at life. It was about the restructuring of the current unfair society and making a guaranteed annual income including an Economic Bill of Rights as a means to crush the scourge of poverty once and for all. The whole ideal is about the poor and the dispossessed having just as much right to have equal opportunity and equal dignity as anyone else living in this Earth. The FBI and the establishment hated Dr. King for this since they believed that he went too far. Richard Nixon made a White House Conference on hunger in 1969. It had hundreds of grassroots human beings there. It was one big fraud conference against the poor according to the late journalist Samuel Yvette. The panel wanted to even have forced sterilization of any such girl giving birth out of wedlock a second time. The late brother Samuel Yette exposed the elite's targeting of the black community. Richard Nixon was a strong proponent of population control. Fannie Lou Hamer wanted freedom and she worked with the many facets of the civil rights movement. He worked with SNCC, the moderate NAACP, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers. As Hamer once proclaimed: “Nobody’s free until everyone’s free.” She worked in believing in the sanctity of human life. She died of heart failure due to hypertension on March 14, 1977. She was 59 years old. She passed away in Mound Bayou, Mississippi and she was buried in her hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi. Her tombstone reads one of her famous quotes, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." She was the youngest of 20 children. Her husband is named Perry Hamer. In her life, she campaigned for maternal and child health. She wanted nutrition and education programs for poor Americans of all races. She assisted the campaign of her friend, U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm. Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman who ran for President and she co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus. She worked for Jo Etha Collier, who was a richly gifted black neighbor of Hamer. Jo Etha Collier was shot by a group of resentful white men on the night of her high school graduation. Fannie Lou Hamer supported single black mothers to live a better life and helped one to go into college. She refused to scapegoat single mothers. She added: "We still love these children. And after these babies are born we are not going to disband these children from our families...I think these children have a right to live. And I think that these mothers have a right to support them in a decent way ...We are dealing with human beings." Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer always had a passion for her people and all human beings.
By Timothy
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