Thesis Statement : Because no stong movement was made by the federal government to incorperate African Americans into American society, black americans would stay at the bottom of the social ladder for years to come. Although the most of white society and politics were working against them, blacks slowly began to integrate themselves into a world of predominantly white society and politics.
https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart5.html
"Reconstruction and Its Aftermath." Reconstruction and Its Aftermath, a Part of the African American Odyssey Exhibition, Is about the Difficulty Free Blacks Faced during the Reconstruction Period. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 June 2016.
- African American's s Voters and Elected Officials - As emancipation spread, many more slaves began to have a political voice. Although many of the first African American politicians began in state or town governments, and gradually worked their way up to being part of th3e federal government. While most black American politicians were freeborn, more and more of black politicians were either from slaver, or were descendants of formerly enslaves individuals.
- Education - Because of slavery, a large majority of the African American population in the United States was illiterate right after Emancipation. Foundations like the Freedmen's Bureau and local African American Churches took it upon themselves to teach illiterate blacks how to read and write. and although most of the teachers of these blacks were white, over the years blacks began to help other African Americans to be literate.
- Sharecropping - Because former slaves had no skills outside of farming, finding work was tough, and as a result many were cohered into becoming tenant farmers out of necessity. Sharecroppers would be fed, clothed. and housed by a plantation owner who would give them a piece of land to car for, and in return the sharecroppers would give a large percentage of their share to the plantation owner, to settle the debt of the years worth of housing. The next step after sharecropping is tenant farming .
- Tenant Farming - Tenant farming was the next step after sharecropping, because, in theory, once a sharecropper had saved up enough money, they could use that money to become a tenant farmer. Tenant farmers paid in cash upfront to rent land from plantation owners, and paid for all of their own expenses, and were able to pay for the cost of living because they could keep the profits from their whole crop. The objective of tenant farming was to someday purchase their own land and own their own farms, but that rarely happened.
- Land Distribution - In 1865, a move was taken to compensate former slaves after the Emancipation, and each adult male slave would receive forty acres of farmland and a mule each, to begin their own careers. Although the next president in office ordered that the slaves be evicted for the former landowners to reclaim their property. Since then much action has taken place in Congress over the Idea of Compensating slaves, some think it is a good idea, and some think that it is illegal and immoral to seize private citizen's property for government usage. Because a general consensus was never made, all legislation in that area was either weak and ineffective or it never got passed into law.
https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart5.html
"Reconstruction and Its Aftermath." Reconstruction and Its Aftermath, a Part of the African American Odyssey Exhibition, Is about the Difficulty Free Blacks Faced during the Reconstruction Period. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 June 2016.