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Asserting Equality: Black Political Activism During Reconstruction

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During Black History Month, we honor African Americans who profoundly impacted the course of American history. During Reconstruction-an era that lasted from about 1865 to 1877-African Americans gained new political and legal rights that were implemented with the support of the federal government. A number of activists redefined how blacks participated in American politics, society, and culture, especially in the South. Men like Hiram Revels, Robert Elliot, and Joseph Rainey were part of the vanguard of black political leadership in this period.

These activists accomplished many significant objectives despite facing harsh racism and having their efforts undermined by Southern whites who felt threatened by newly empowered black citizens. Though African Americans saw many of the gains made during Reconstruction rolled back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the actions of these early African American leaders inspired those who followed them and carved a path for civil rights leaders in the mid-twentieth century.
Black Activism in Reconstruction
Although African American slaves were freed by the end of the Civil War, they were not immediately given legal and political rights under President Andrew Johnson. During the first years of Reconstruction, blacks formed Equal Rights Leagues in the South to demand equality under the law, including the right to vote, and to fight oppressive black codes-laws that restricted the lives of newly freed African Americans in various ways.

From 1867 to 1877-the period known as Radical Reconstruction-black Americans were given many basic rights by Congress, such as official citizenship and the right to vote. As more African Americans were allowed to participate in American political life, organizations like the growing Union League supported black political activism in the South. Beginning in 1867, blacks took part in state constitutional conventions for the first time and comprised the vast majority of Republican voters in the South.

During Reconstruction, about 2,000 African American men served in political office. Hundreds of blacks held local offices in the South, more than 600 were elected to state legislatures, and 16 served in Congress. To take these posts, they often had to win elections plagued by violence and fraud. Southern whites used many forms of intimidation to oppose black voters, politicians, policies, and rights. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations also attacked Republican leaders and African Americans during this period, killing at least 35 black officials.
Hiram Revels
One of the most influential black leaders during Reconstruction was Hiram Revels, the first African American elected to serve in the U.S. Senate. Revels represented the state of Mississippi. Like many black leaders of this era, he had acquired leadership experience in the church and the Union Army. Revels had been born free in North Carolina. Educated in Illinois, he was a preacher in the Midwest and a black regiment's chaplain in the Union Army during the Civil War. He went to Mississippi in 1865 to work for the Freedmen's Bureau.

In January 1870, Revels was elected to the U.S. Senate by the Mississippi state legislature, to complete the term of a seat left vacant since the Civil War. When elected, Revels was widely praised. His biography and personal description were published in newspapers across the country, such as the Wisconsin State Register and the Little Rock, Arkansas, Morning Republican. In the Dover Gazette & Strafford Advertiser, Revels was lauded as "a man of much energy of character, with excellent and well developed mental qualifications. In his person is centered one of the grandest thoughts of the nineteenth century-the equality of all men before the law."

Revels served just one year in the Senate because he was not chosen for a full six-year term; he was replaced by a white Republican and former Confederate general. Though Revels and other black politicians usually did not have the same power as white politicians in office, they successfully supported and advocated measures for racial equality.
Robert Elliott
Another important African American politician of the Reconstruction era was South Carolina's Robert Elliott. Like Revels, Elliott was well educated. Born in England, he attended schools there and trained as a typesetter. He came to Boston in 1867 and moved to South Carolina later that year. Elliott became involved in politics in 1868 as a delegate at the state constitutional convention. African Americans in South Carolina had been organizing politically longer than those living in most other states, and many blacks were elected to early state conventions there. At the 1868 convention, Elliott was one of 78 black delegates. He stood out for his strong oratory skills and passionate support for compulsory education.

Subsequently, Elliott held a county office, was elected to both the state house and state assembly, and was appointed the assistant adjutant general before winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870. In Congress, Elliott faced several challenges. Unlike other African Americans serving in the House at that time, he was dark skinned and was more radical in his passionate support for black civil rights. Consequently, he and many other African American congressmen were refused service in various establishments in Washington, D.C. Elliott supported a bill that would ban such forms of public discrimination.
Joseph Rainey
Also a politician from South Carolina, Joseph Rainey was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was a member of the House from 1870 to 1879, the longest tenure of any African American legislator during Reconstruction. In April 1874, Rainey experienced another first, becoming the first black man to preside over a session of the House.

Unlike Revels and Elliott, Rainey had been born into slavery, though his father bought his family's freedom when Rainey was a child. Receiving a limited education, Rainey was trained as a barber, then was forced to serve in the Confederate Army until he and his family escaped to Bermuda. Returning after the end of the Civil War, Rainey became active in Republican politics in 1867 and won a seat in the state senate in 1870. Shortly thereafter, he was elected to complete a congressional term for a U.S. Representative who resigned due to scandal. Winning several subsequent elections on his own-though not without legal controversy-Rainey advocated for both his black and white constituents, but focused especially on civil rights.

After leaving office, Rainey remained politically active even as African American rights eroded. In January 1881, he took part in the Cleveland conference of colored men which was organizing a push for African American rights under the newly elected president, James Garfield. In an open letter to Rainey and other participants published in the Lynchburg Virginian, Arthur St. A. Smith wrote, "gentlemen, let me say that if you, the present leaders of our people do not secure some substantial recognition at the hands of Gen. Garfield, you might as well take back seats, for you gentlemen, at least, can never rally the negroes to the Republican polls again ...."
Post-Reconstruction Activism
After Reconstruction ended, other black political leaders continued to fight for the civil rights and the legal justices that were being denied to African Americans. Many more conventions were held and organizations were formed on state and national levels, to help coordinate efforts and expand the political footprint of African Americans and their supporters. One such meeting was held in November 1889. According to the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, the Wisconsin Civil Rights league was created and began framing a civil rights bill to present to the state legislature. Another gathering was held in early 1889 to form a National Afro-American League that was intended, according to T. Thomas Fortune in the New York Age, "to secure the rights denied the race." Although the fight for civil rights did not end in the nineteenth century, the work of courageous black Americans such as Revels, Elliott, and Rainey helped to introduce a new democratic order and forever changed the political and social landscape of the United States.

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Asserting Equality: Black Political Activism During Reconstruction

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During Black History Month, we honor African Americans who profoundly impacted the course of American history. During Reconstruction-an era that lasted from about 1865 to 1877-African Americans gained new political and legal rights that were implemented with the support of the federal government. A number of activists redefined how blacks participated in American politics, society,...

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"The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression."

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W.E.B. Du Bois Quotes (Author of The Souls of Black Folk)

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256 quotes from W.E.B. Du Bois: 'Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.', 'Believe in life! Always human beings will progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.', and 'The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.'

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The National Urban League (NUL) founded in 1910, mission was to help African American migrants assimilate into urban life.  The group began with the merger of three smaller groups, The National League for the Protection of Colored Women, The Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions for Negroes in New York, and the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes in New York. All three were dedicated to helping Americans urban newcomers mainly from the South, expand their employment, housing, healthcare, and educational opportunities. The groups guiding principle - promote positive interracial interaction by persuading whites that they should work with African Americans for mutual advantage.

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The National Urban League (NUL) was formed on October 11, 1910, to help African American migrants assimilate into urban life. The NUL began with the merger of three smaller groups, The National League for the Protection of Colored Women, The Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions for Negroes in New York, and the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes in New York, all dedicated to helping Americans urban newcomers mainly from the South, expand their employment, housing, healthcare, and educational opportunities. Its first Executive Secretary, George E. Haynes (1910-1917) established its guiding principle, promote positive interracial interaction by persuading whites that they should work with African Americans for mutual advantage.

Eugene Kinkle Jones, who became Executive Secretary of the Urban League in 1917 and led the organization until his retirement in 1941, was the most influential individual in shaping the early organization. Jones emphasized the importance of vocational guidance to the new migrants and worked with industrialists and other Northern employers to open employment opportunities for the newcomers. Through the first half of the 20th Century, the NUL in fact saw gaining employment for the black migrants to the city as one of its principal functions. In 1925, the magazine Opportunity was created to present factual data on African American life to businessmen, government officials, labor leaders, and the general white community.

Lester B. Granger succeeded Jones in 1941 as the NUL's executive secretary and began redirecting the organization's agenda by focusing on leading civil rights causes of the era. Granger, for example, played a major role in persuading President Harry Truman to desegregate the armed forces in 1948.

In 1961, Granger's successor, Whitney M. Young Jr. Young expanded on most of Granger's ideas and made the NUL one of the five major civil rights organizations in the nation during that decade. Young led crucial fundraising efforts which supported civil rights activism. He was one of the first black civil rights leaders to promote affirmative action initiatives that were put in place during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

As direct civil rights activism began to recede in the early 1970s, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., who became executive direction in 1971, shifted the organization's focus to the promotion of cultural pluralism. He developed The State of Black America report as well as a citizenship education program that helped increase the black vote.

John E. Jacob, appointed executive director in 1982 and his successor Hugh B. Price who was appointed in 1994, continued those efforts while returning to the earlier Urban League mission of job training. Jacob and Price called for equality of opportunity in housing and employment as the way to resolve racial tensions. They also began or enlarged training and leadership development opportunities and initiated youth-development programs which targeted reducing teenage pregnancy, the number of single female-headed family households, and crime in black urban communities. Price created the League's Institute of Opportunity and Equality in Washington D.C., which conducted a research and public policy analysis of urban issues and began the Campaign for African American Achievement.

On May 15, 2003, Marc H. Morial became the league's eighth President and Executive officer. Morial continues the efforts of his predecessors in promoting affirmative action, economic and political empowerment and working to reduce violence and poverty in urban black America.

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National Urban League (1910 - ) * BlackPast

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Image Ownership: Public Domain The National Urban League (NUL) was formed on October 11, 1910, to help African American migrants assimilate into urban life. The NUL began with the merger of three smaller groups, The National League for the Protection of Colored Women, The Committee ...

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The Anti-Lynching Campaign later became one of the NAACP’s central goals.

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The passage of anti-lynching legislation became one of the NAACP's central goals. Although slow to join the cause because its leaders worried about the constitutionality of imposing such a federal law on the states, the NAACP eventually embraced the anti-lynching movement, using it to educate the often ambivalent white population and spur substantive action.

Statistics supported the NAACP's increased urgency in the anti-lynching campaign. Thousands of southern African Americans had been murdered in the 1890s, and that violence continued into the 20th century. Between 1901 and 1929, more than 1,200 African Americans were lynched in the South. Forty-one percent of these lynchings occurred in two exceptionally violent states: Georgia (250) and Mississippi (245). ¹²² The NAACP report, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1919, created momentum for congressional action. The anti-lynching effort provided the NAACP with valuable experience both waging a mass public relations campaign and mastering the art of congressional relations. ¹²³ In the 1920s, through the organizational leadership and diverse talents of its secretary, James Weldon Johnson, the NAACP became a significant vehicle for marshaling public opinion. Johnson's biographer described him as "truly the 'Renaissance man' of the Harlem Renaissance"-a poet, composer, writer, and activist. ¹²⁴ Acting as the group's chief congressional lobbyist, he pushed for the reduction scheme during the larger congressional debate over reapportionment and decisively shaped the NAACP's campaign against lynching. Of his anti-lynching lobbying experience, Johnson recalled, "I tramped the corridors of the Capitol and the two office buildings so constantly that toward the end, I could, I think, have been able to find my way about blindfolded." ¹²⁵

Pushed vigorously by Johnson and Atlanta civil rights activist and NAACP assistant executive secretary Walter White, anti-lynching reform awaited only a legislative sponsor in Congress and, tragically, a triggering event. Activists found Representative Leonidas C. Dyer to be a willing ally. Dyer, a Spanish-American War veteran and a former aide to Missouri Governor Herbert S. Hadley, represented a thin sliver of the southern and eastern sections of St. Louis. Heavily industrialized, part of the district hugged the Mississippi River and included growing African-American neighborhoods. 126 Since his election to the House in 1911, Dyer had demonstrated a disposition toward advocating for the black community. ¹²⁷

Dyer had a front-row seat to some of the nation's most virulent wartime race violence. In the summer of 1917, just across the Mississippi River from his district, a riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, drew national attention and widespread condemnation. A hub for southern blacks migrating northward, East St. Louis had seen its black population triple in the first decade of the 20th century. Competition for jobs and overt prejudice made many white Northerners apprehensive about black migration. On July 1, 1917, white assailants drove through a black neighborhood, firing indiscriminately. Two plainclothes police officers sent to investigate the incident arrived in a vehicle similar to the one driven by the shooters. Fearful residents mistakenly opened fire on the policemen, both of whom were killed. When white residents retaliated on July 2, the situation erupted into a merciless episode of mob sadism. The death toll climbed to 47, including 38 African-American men, women, and children. Much of the black population fled the city. ¹²⁸ On the House Floor, Dyer decried the event as one of "the most dastardly and most criminal outrages ever perpetrated in this country." Large numbers of refugees flowed across the river and into his district, compelling Dyer to tackle the problem of lynching and mob violence.

The rash of wartime mob violence nationwide provided new impetus for legislative action. ¹²⁹ After months of consultation with legal experts and the NAACP, Representative Dyer introduced H.R. 11279 on April 18, 1918, "to protect citizens of the United States against lynching in default of protection by the States." Dyer's bill, which provided the blueprint for all subsequent NAACP-backed anti-lynching measures, sought to charge lynch mobs with capital murder and to try lynching cases in federal court. It levied on each county where a lynching occurred, a fine of between $5,000 and $10,000 that would be paid to the victim's immediate family or, if none existed, to the U.S. government to facilitate prosecution of the case. The Dyer bill also mandated jail time and imposed a fine of up to $5,000 on state and local law enforcement officials who refused to make a reasonable effort to prevent a lynching or surrendered a prisoner in their custody to a lynch mob. Finally, the bill sought to establish guidelines for fair courtroom proceedings by excluding lynch mob participants and supporters from juries. ¹³⁰

Dyer's rationale was elegantly simple: Lynching-and the refusal by states to prosecute the perpetrators-violated victims' Fourteenth Amendment rights. Anticipating that Members would object to the bill because it involved federal control over social policy, he cited the slate of child labor laws the chamber had enacted and Congress's December 1917 passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, which forbade the production, transportation, or sale of alcohol within the United States. "If Congress has felt its duty to do these things, why should it not also assume jurisdiction and enact laws to protect the lives of citizens of the United States against lynch law and mob violence?" Dyer asked. "Are the rights of property, or what a citizen shall drink, or the ages and conditions under which children shall work, any more important to the Nation than life itself?" ¹³¹ In the Democratic-controlled 65th Congress (1917-1919), however, the measure remained stuck in the Judiciary Committee.

When Republicans gained majorities in the House and Senate at the start of the 66th Congress in 1919, however, supporters of the Dyer bill grew more optimistic. In early 1921, James Weldon Johnson paid his first visit to Representative Dyer's office, recognizing that the St. Louis Representative was a valuable contact. ¹³² Throughout this process, the NAACP played a significant role in keeping the issue alive in Congress. At several junctures, Johnson bolstered Dyer, urging him not to compromise on the legislation and encouraging him to resist pressure from the Republican Conference to abandon the legislation which many of his colleagues wanted to avoid having to debate. ¹³³

Under the NAACP's intense lobbying, the House began to move toward consideration of a bill derived from Dyer's earlier efforts-first adopting a rule for consideration and then, in early January 1922 commencing consideration on the legislation. ¹³⁴ Southern opponents attempted to impede debate several times, refusing to come to the House Chamber so as to prevent a quorum. On such occasions Speaker Frederick H. Gillett of Massachusetts ordered the chamber doors locked and dispatched the Sergeant at Arms to search for errant Members. ¹³⁵ The debate came to a head on January 25 and 26, 1922, when the House considered a bill that contained many of the essentials of Dyer's original measure. Though the provision seeking to ensure an impartial jury had been removed, the bill sought to levy a $10,000 fine on counties where lynchings occurred-as well as on counties through which victims were transported.

Southern Democrats rebuffed the measure, mustering familiar arguments. Hatton W. Sumners of Texas, a Dallas attorney who later served 16 years as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, led the opposition. In two lengthy debates, Sumners compared the bill itself to an act of legislative "mob" violence and suggested Congress let southern states resolve the lynching issue on their own. "I say to you that you cannot pass this bill unless you pass it under the influence of the same spirit which this bill denounces, viz., the mob spirit," Sumners said to laughter and applause on the House Floor. "You say that the folks down in the South are not doing this thing fast enough, and the folks in the South say the officers are not doing this thing fast enough, and you each get ropes and they go after the criminal and you go after the Constitution." ¹³⁶

African Americans packed the House Gallery, intensely monitoring the debate, and on several occasions they cheered loudly, in violation of gallery rules. Some traded derogatory barbs with southern House Members below on the floor, whose speeches repeatedly referred to NAACP activists as "race agitators." ¹³⁷ The glare of publicity pushed cautious House leaders to move swiftly for a vote. In the end, the Dyer bill passed the Republican-controlled chamber on January 26, 1922, by a vote of 231 to 119, with four Members voting "present" and 74 others not voting. ¹³⁸ Among the 119 who voted "no" were four future Speakers of the House, each a southern Democrat who eventually presided over the chamber after Democrats assumed control of the House in 1931: John Nance Garner of Texas, Joseph Byrns of Tennessee, William Bankhead of Alabama, and Sam Rayburn of Texas. ¹³⁹

In the Senate, a combination of ambivalent Republican support and spirited southern opposition doomed the Dyer bill to legislative limbo. It withered in the Judiciary Committee under the unsympathetic oversight of Chairman William Borah of Idaho, who doubted its constitutionality. Nevertheless, Borah pledged not to block consideration of the measure if a majority of his colleagues assented. The measure passed out of the committee 8 to 6 in the summer of 1922-with Borah dissenting. ¹⁴⁰

The NAACP proceeded to engage in a formidable public campaign, increasing direct pressure on Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, who faced re-election that fall. Lodge, who had authored the federal elections bill in 1890, had greatly moderated his previously progressive stance on federal oversight of black civil rights. He reluctantly brought the measure to the Senate Floor in September, but his choice of a manager to shepherd the bill through debate-Samuel Shortridge, California's junior Senator and a relative novice-indicated he had little enthusiasm for the endeavor. Byron (Pat) Harrison of Mississippi swiftly upstaged Shortridge by gaining control of the debate. Reluctant to debate the bill during an election year, the Senate stalled consideration until after the November 1922 midterms. ¹⁴¹

When the bill came up for consideration in late November after the elections, southern Members again rebuffed Shortridge with parliamentary maneuvers. As he had with the reduction issue two decades earlier, Alabama's Oscar Underwood, now Senate Minority Leader, played a key role in killing the Dyer measure. Underwood threatened Lodge and the Republicans with a filibuster that would shut down end-of-session business in the Senate. Fearful they would be unable to secure a ship subsidy bill desired by the Harding administration, the members of the Senate Republican Conference voted to abandon the Dyer bill. Though Representative Dyer reintroduced the measure in each new Congress in the 1920s, it failed to gain significant political traction. The public awareness campaign relentlessly pushed by the NAACP, however, likely contributed to a general decline in lynching after the 1920s. It would be 15 years before Congress would seriously consider the subject again. In the words of historian Robert Zangrando, anti-lynching legislation was "displaced by the indifference of its friends and the strategy of its enemies." ¹⁴²
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Anti-Lynching Legislation Renewed | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives

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The passage of anti-lynching legislation became one of the NAACP's central goals. Although slow to join the cause because its leaders worried about the constitutionality of imposing such a federal law on the states, the NAACP eventually embraced the anti-lynching movement, using it to educate the often ambivalent white population and spur substantive action.Statistics supported the NAACP's increased urgency in the anti-lynching campaign.

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Outraged by abduction murdered three young African-American businessmen in Memphis, Ida B. Wells began keeping records of the  large numbers of lynchings that took place in America. Wells, was an African-American journalist. She was born a slave and became an activist after she was ordered to leave her seat on a streetcar and move to a segregated car.

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The National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in 1909, it was a champion of social justice, which has fought long and hard to ensure that the voices of African Americans would be heard. The group was formed by W. E. B. Du Bois, the first African-American to receive a PhD from Harvard University.

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From police brutality to COVID-19 to voter suppression, Black communities are under attack. We work to disrupt inequality, dismantle racism, and accelerate change in key areas including criminal justice, health care, education, climate, and the economy. When it comes to civil rights and social justice, we have the unique ability to secure more wins than anyone else. Help make racial equity a reality.
Join the NAACP

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From police brutality to COVID-19 to voter suppression, Black communities are under attack. We work to disrupt inequality, dismantle racism, and accelerate change in key areas including criminal justice, health care, education, climate, and the economy. When it comes to civil rights and social justice, we have the unique ability to secure more wins than anyone else.

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In 1905, The Niagara Movement, a civil-rights founded by activist W. E. B. Du Bois whose sole purpose was to bring about social and political change for African Americans. The group demanded an end to segregation and discrimination in unions, the courts, and public accommodations, as well as equality of economic and educational opportunity. Unfortunately the group had little impact on legislative action.

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Organizations like the Urban League, the Niagara Movement, the NAACP and the Anti-Lynching Campaign entered the scene because they were fed up with the treatment that the descendants of African slaves received. Their goal was to change the narrative and treatment of the descendants.

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After the American Civil War had ended the descendants of African slaves were given new freedom with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment. Unfortunately, they discovered that they were not yet truly free! Groups who refused to let go of the reigns of slavery found ways to keep them oppressed. Laws like Jim Crow and the Black Codes were designed to keep the descendants in their rightful place – working at the heels of their slave masters.