Climbing Up to Glory (31 page)

One of the most heated debates during the Reconstruction period took place over the Fifteenth Amendment, which endorsed black male suffrage. Shortly after the Civil War concluded, a group of black and white abolitionists and suffragists met in New York City and founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in May 1866. Although social reformers such as Wendell Phillips, Lucy Stone, Stephen Foster, Abby Kelley Foster, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, George Downing, Sojourner Truth, Hattie Purvis, Robert Purvis, Sarah Remond, and Charles Lenox Remond had worked harmoniously earlier for the abolition of slavery, this cooperation would soon evaporate. Only a few months later, it become apparent that the overall objective of the AERA, whose major architects were Anthony, Stanton, and Douglass, would not be realized. Its purpose was to bring together abolitionists and feminists to agitate for black and woman suffrage. By 1867 it was evident that either group, but not both, would be enfranchised; and, as a consequence, AERA forums became more heated than ever.
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The 1869 AERA meeting was a contentious one, resulting in the split of the AERA into two suffrage organizations: the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by Stanton and Anthony; and the American Woman Suffrage Association, founded by Lucy Stone and Henry Ward Beecher. Douglass and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a prominent black political and social activist, argued that black men should be given priority over women in the struggle for the ballot. However, Stanton, Anthony, and Sojourner Truth believed otherwise. They argued that both black men and women should simultaneously receive the right to vote.
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The Fifteenth Amendment, which granted black males the right to vote, was passed by Congress in late February 1869, with the steadfast support of black politicians at the state and national levels. It was ratified by the states and became a part of the Constitution on March 30, 1870, just ten months after the AERA dissolved itself. The Amendment stated specifically that the right to vote “shall not be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
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Some perceptive black leaders, who correctly feared that passage would later open the door to poll taxes, literacy tests, and property qualifications as requirements for voting, preferred language in the Amendment that would explicitly guarantee all male citizens the right to vote. Had this been done, the loopholes that white supremacists used to deprive black males of the vote in the aftermath of Reconstruction would have been closed.

Nevertheless, the majority of black leaders were aware of the monumental step forward that the Fifteenth Amendment represented. For example, Joseph Rainey, who went on to serve four terms in Congress, declared in Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1870 at a Fourth of July rally that distinctions of color had been “to a great extent destroyed by the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment to our National Constitution—the keystone to the arch of our political structure.”
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But the view of the Amendment's significance put forth by Charles B. Ray, pastor of Bethesda Congregational Church and former editor of the
Colored American,
perhaps best reveals the feelings of most black leaders in its regard. He maintained that “the Fifteenth Amendment fulfilled the revolutionary idea of equality in the same way that the Civil War completed the revolutionary idea of freedom.” Without the Amendment, Ray noted, “the nation would not have completed the fabric of government which it commenced to build on the principles enunciated in 1776, as the chief cornerstone of the government, namely, ‘All men are created free and equal.' ”
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As expected, the black population as a whole embraced the Fifteenth Amendment as enthusiastically as did their leaders. With the announcement of its adoption, celebrations took place in black communities throughout the South. Four thousand blacks attended a political rally in Augusta, Georgia, where, in the opinion of a local newspaper, “there must have been a general suspension of farm and other labor within a radius of ten miles square from the city.” Several thousand gathered in Macon, Georgia,
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and Louisville, Kentucky, also witnessed a large celebration. It was agreed by those present to support the Republican Party, which many believed was responsible for emancipation. The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment was declared a “victory of right over wrong, of liberty over slavery, of freedom over oppression.” Moreover, blacks should make “no terms —with Kentucky Democracy.” Ratification was also observed in other areas of Kentucky such as Frankfort, Hopkinsville, and Georgetown.
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And, of course, many ratification celebrations took place in South Carolina, the state with the heaviest concentration of blacks and where a large number of prominent black leaders resided. There were festivities in Edgefield, Abbeville, Charleston, Columbia, and elsewhere; indeed, every city, town, and county courthouse had a Fifteenth Amendment celebration. Apparently, Robert Brown Elliott was among the most popular speakers.
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As a consequence of the passage of acts by Congress that applied throughout the country and of laws enacted at the state and local levels, the decade following the Civil War witnessed astonishing advances in the political, civil, and social rights of Northern blacks. Laws barring blacks from entering Northern states, testifying in court, and voting were made null and void by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the postwar constitutional amendments. Blacks pressing damage claims against railroads and streetcars that barred them from first-class compartments or excluded them altogether invoked these new laws to support their cases. In 1867 the Pennsylvania state legislature prohibited streetcar segregation; and, in a pioneering move six years later Republicans in New York in 1873 enacted a civil rights law that outlawed discrimination in all public accommodations. Moreover, the political climate in New York shifted so dramatically that the state's Republican Party supported a referendum as early as 1869 that would have granted equal suffrage to blacks. Despite the failure to gain passage, 90 percent of the party's voters supported the referendum. In much of the North, discrimination in transportation had disappeared, although state courts generally held that segregated facilities, if truly equal, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Blacks also made progress in access to public schools in states where they had earlier been denied. Some cities with sizable black populations such as New York and Cincinnati refused to integrate their schools, but others such as Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee instituted integrated school systems and occasionally hired a black teacher. In Michigan and Iowa, integrated education was common throughout the state.
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Despite the advances made by Northern blacks during Reconstruction, most of them, like blacks in the South, remained trapped in poverty and confined to inferior housing. Many counted themselves lucky to be employed in what were usually menial and unskilled jobs. Often they were undercut in their efforts to obtain even low-level jobs by the influx of European immigrants coming into the North. Furthermore, labor unions barred blacks from membership and employers customarily discriminated against them, preferring to give the lowest-rung jobs to the new immigrants. Indicative of the economic plight of Northern blacks is the fact that a survey of New York City's black community in 1871 found some four hundred waiters and five hundred longshoremen, but only two physicians and a handful of skilled craftsmen. This situation was due to some extent to the lack of militancy of Northern black politicians, who failed to develop a viable strategy for addressing the economic plight of their communities. Owing to the fact that most politicians came from a minute business class and represented a tiny black political constituency of less than 2 percent, this failure was perhaps inevitable. Still, the North's public life was now open to blacks in ways that were inconceivable before the Civil War.
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Those blacks who had been held as slaves by the Cherokee Indians also vigorously struggled for equal rights within the Cherokee Nation. Although Cherokee freedmen were able to vote in local and national elections, they were caught between two political parties, neither of which cared very much for advancing their interests. Because it was not popular to advocate equality for freedmen and because both major parties were shrewd, they refused to make equal rights a top priority. However, the two parties desired the votes of freedmen and aggressively courted them for their political support. From the outset, most Cherokee freedmen were aware of the fact that Cherokee politicians did not represent their interests, and they distrusted them. For example, in 1876, Joseph Rogers told his fellow freedmen: “The leaders of both parties always told me next Council we will fix it, we almost got it through this time, just vote us in once more.” He further noted, “Just so it is, next Council and next Council, like tomorrow, never comes, it is the delusive [sic] end of the rainbow, with its sacks of gold always in sight, but never in reach, a receding tantalizing will-o-the wisp, leading you further into the morass of disappointment.” In Rogers's opinion, these politicians could not be taken at their word because “they may honey you with sweet words and promises of citizenship, however much they may Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones you, they are only giving you a pill, sugar coated it may be, still only a pill to work you through the election.... I don't believe there is anything to hope for from these politicians.”
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While Cherokee freedmen gained access to the ballot, they were unsuccessful in their efforts to win elective offices. In the election of 1875, Joseph Brown of Tahlequah District became the first and only freedman elected to the National Council. He went on to serve one term in the lower house and was subsequently nominated by the Tahlequah District as one of the Cherokee Nation's representatives to the Grand Council of the Indian Territory. However, by the time of his nomination, this position had waned in significance, since the Grand Council had lost congressional support. And, furthermore, it was on the verge of disbanding.
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The disappointment felt by Cherokee freedmen over their failure to gain elective offices did little to dissuade them from pushing their case for equal rights. They vigorously campaigned for full citizenship but were careful not to invite the wrath of those in power. Many of their petitions for full citizenship struck a patriotic tone. For example, a group of Cherokee freedmen petitioned in 1879 for equal rights: “The Cherokee nation is our country; there we were born and reared; there are our homes made by the sweat of our brows; there are our wives and children, whom we love as dearly as though we were born with red, instead of black skins. There we intend to live and defend our national rights, as guaranteed by the treaties and laws of the United States, by every legitimate and lawful means.”
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The plight of deprived Native Americans, either black or full-blooded, had been of much concern to blacks for several years. In fact, more than a few significant black figures expressed their identification with Native Americans or fought for their rights, and a number have argued that blacks and Native Americans had a common interest. For example, the father of black nationalism in the United States, Martin R. Delany, as early as 1852 in a speech denouncing slavery, made the connection between the plight of both groups: “We are identical as the subject of American wrongs, outrages and oppression, and therefore one in interest.” He was so concerned with this topic that he would devote a whole chapter to it in his only novel,
Blake,
in 1859. In the book, Delany discussed ways in which both blacks and Native Americans could combat the common foe: individuals of European descent.
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In the post-Civil War period, the U.S. government pushed its genocidal policy in regard to Native Americans into high gear, and black politicians were among some of the most vocal critics of this policy. Senator Blanch K. Bruce of Mississippi, himself a former runaway slave, launched what many scholars regard as the most stinging assault on the government's genocidal policy by a U.S. citizen who was not a Native American. Bruce came onto the floor of the Senate on April 7, 1880, and told his colleagues exactly how U.S. actions had made Native Americans fugitives and vagabonds in their own land. He got right to the point:

Senator Bruce closed his remarks with a special plea to “save and not destroy these people, who stood in the path of the U.S. government and its citizens.”
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Unfortunately, his words did not resonate with most whites, as the genocidal policy toward Native Americans continued to flourish in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. And, indeed, it inflicted great suffering on Native Americans, some of whom were freedmen living within the various Indian nations.