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Summary Then Reconstruction tried to reconcile the cultures, white and black. It took a while, but rich men saw the economic light: enslave the workingman, both black and white. Chapter Despite their struggles, slaves maintained cohesive family ties, and varied culture. With their freedom they would realize the gains that education guaranteed, a different style of life for them, as Reconstruction tried to reconcile the blacks and whites (and one man shouted "Mammy don't you cook no more - you's free! you's free!"). Amendments followed: 13 took them out of slavery, and 14 made them citizens, and 15 gave the vote. As quickly as a black man wins his freedom, though, the white establishment can set him back. The lesser pay, "black codes" down south, a Ku Klux Klan attack, the Jim Crow laws; and rules that curbed the black's ability to vote (a poll tax, must be literate, or property required; the Homestead Act deferring to an amnesty for whites, and Andrew Johnson fighting suffrage {a degree of black support elected Grant, and Congress had impeached the troubled Southern President before he breached this promise to the blacks}). Then Hayes became the President through business deals, with every black-protecting regiment removed from Southern land. And after blacks were placed in debt and swindled, gains by abolitionist and suffragette were nearly meaningless, and "Plessy versus Ferguson" in '96 condoned a "separate but equal" view -- the politics of race were back in vogue, and moreso inequality: as Booker Washington supported black passivity, Du Bois would see the bigger picture in a much depraved free market system: all the poor and workingmen enslaved. |