*The Reconstruction Acts were decided on this date in 1867. Four statutes were passed during the Reconstruction Era by the 40th United States Congress, which addressed the requirement for Southern States to be readmitted to the Union. Called the Military Reconstruction Acts, the actual title of the initial legislation was “An act to provide for the more efficient government of the Rebel States,” it […]
learn moreThe founding of Howard High School in Wilmington, Delaware in 1867 is celebrated on this date.
For more than a century this historic institution played a central role in educating the Black Community of Wilmington, Delaware. The Society for the Improvement of Morals of the People of African Descent was active in its beginning. The school was named for General Oliver Otis Howard, who worked with the Freedmen’s Bureau. Edwina B. Kruse served as Howard’s first principal between 1871 and 1922. From 1902 to 1920, Alice Dunbar Nelson was a teacher and administrator there.
learn more*Independence Day 1867, the political term scalawag is briefly defined. A Scalawag was a white-American Southerner who supported Blacks after the American Civil War. Like the term carpetbagger, the word has a history of use as a slur in one-sided Southern debates. The opponents of the scalawags claimed they were disloyal to traditional values. The term is commonly used in historical studies as a neutral descriptor […]
learn moreOn this date in 1867, emancipated Blacks began influencing South Carolina politics, when citizens of the state endorsed their constitutional convention and selected state delegates.
learn more*On this date in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted. Approved as one of the Reconstruction Amendments, it is one of the most important American amendments to the present day. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment […]
learn moreOn this date in 1868, the Opelousas massacre occurred. That city in Louisiana was the site where local Blacks lost their lives by violent whites (many of them Confederate veterans and prominent citizens).
The slaughter started when three local whites beat up an 18-year old man named Emerson Bentley, a white editor (and non-Louisianan) of the local Republican newspaper and a teacher with the Freedmen’s Bureau. Reacting to Bentley’s beating, local Blacks came to his rescue. The sheriff arrested 12, who were taken from jail and hung that night.
learn more*On this date in 1868, Cuba’s Ten Years’ War began. Also known as the Great War (Guerra Grande) and the War of ’68, it was part of Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain. Cuban-born planters and other wealthy natives led the uprising. Sugar mill owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and his followers proclaimed independence and […]
learn moreOn this date in 1868, a Black senator was assassinated in South Carolina.
B.F. Randolph, a member of the South Carolina State Legislature during Reconstruction, was murdered at Cokesburg in Abbeville, S.C. He had been on an election tour and the night before had delivered an address at the Abbeville court house. The next day he took the train to Cokesburg, put his baggage in the ladies car, and went to the train’s platform at Hodges Depot.
learn moreOn this date in 1868, the first Black man was elected to the U.S. Congress
John Willis Menard defeated a White candidate, 5,107 to 2,833, in an election in Louisiana’s Second Congressional District to fill an unexpired term in the Fortieth Congress.
learn more*The site of Fort Sill was founded on this date in 1869. Located in Lawton, Oklahoma, this was a strategic post-American Civil War location that leveraged the use of Black soldiers against Native Americans to expand the white government’s land acquisition in the West. Maj founded Fort Still. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan led a white-American […]
learn more*The Colored National Labor Union (CNLU) first met on this date in 1869. Established during a 4-day convention, the CNLU was formed by Blacks to organize their labor collectively nationally. The CNLU, like other labor unions in the United States, was created to improve the working conditions and quality of life for its members. During the […]
learn more*On this date in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. This guaranteed African American men the right to vote.
The 15th Amendment maintains “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by a State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The text also gives Congress the power to enforce the amendment.
learn more*On this date, the Enforcement Act of 1870 was passed. It is also known as the Civil Rights Act, First Ku Klux Klan Act, or Force Act. It was an American federal law written to empower the President with the legal authority to enforce the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment throughout the United States. The act was the first of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to […]
learn more*On this date in 1870, The Annexation of Santo Domingo was defeated. This was a failed American treaty during the later Reconstruction Era, initiated by American President Ulysses S. Grant. The goal was to annex “Santo Domingo” (as the Dominican Republic was known then) as a United States territory, with the promise of eventual statehood. The President feared some European power would take the island […]
learn more*On this date in 1870, we affirm the American Redeemers. They were a white political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce white supremacy. Their policy of Redemption […]
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