African American founding fathers of the United States

The African American founding fathers of the United States are the African Americans who worked to include the equality of all races as a fundamental principle of the United States. Beginning in the abolition movement of the 19th century, they worked for the abolition of slavery, and also for the abolition of second class status for free blacks. Their goals were temporarily realized in the late 1860s, with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution. However, after Reconstruction ended in 1877, the gains were partly lost and an era of Jim Crow gave blacks reduced social, economic and political status. The recovery was achieved in the Civil Rights Movement, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, under the leadership of blacks, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel, as well as whites that included Supreme Court justices and Presidents. In the 21st century scholars have studied the African American founding fathers in depth.David Hackett Fischer, African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals (Simon and Schuster, 2022).Eric Foner, The Second Founding (2019).

Reconstruction

Politics of Reconstruction As the Civil War was ending, the major issues facing President Abraham Lincoln were the status of the ex-slaves (called "Freedmen"), the loyalty and civil rights of ex-rebels, the status of the 11 ex-Confederate states, the powers of the federal government needed to prevent a future civil war, and the question of whether Congress or the President would make the major decisions.Eric Foner, A short history of Reconstruction, 1863–1877 (1990) pp. xi online

The severe threats of starvation and displacement of the unemployed, unhoused freedmen were met by the first major federal relief agency, the Freedmen's Bureau, operated by the Army.Paul A, Cimbala, The Freedmen's Bureau: Reconstructing the American South after the Civil War (2005) includes a brief history and primary documents

Three "Reconstruction Amendments" were passed to expand civil rights for black Americans: the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal rights for all and citizenship for blacks; the Fifteenth Amendment prevented race from being used to disfranchise men.

Of more immediate usefulness than the constitutional amendments, were laws passed by Congress to allow the federal government, through the new Justice Department and through the federal courts to enforce the new civil rights Even if the state governments ignored the problem. These included the Enforcement Acts of 1870–71 and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.Robert J. Kaczorowski, "To Begin the Nation Anew: Congress, Citizenship, and Civil Rights after the Civil War." American Historical Review 92.1 (1987): 45–68. in JSTORStephen Cresswell, "Enforcing the Enforcement Acts: The Department of Justice in Northern Mississippi, 1870–1890." Journal of Southern History 53#3 (1987): 421–440. in JSTOR

Ex-Confederates remained in control of most Southern states for more than two years, but that changed when the Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1866 elections. President Andrew Johnson, who sought easy terms for reunions with ex-rebels, was virtually powerless; he escaped by one vote removal through impeachment. Congress enfranchised black men and temporarily suspended many ex-Confederate leaders of the right to hold office. New Republican governments came to power based on a coalition of Freedmen together with Carpetbaggers (new arrivals from the North), and Scalawags (native white Southerners). They were backed by the US Army. Opponents said they were corrupt and violated the rights of whites. The Republicans were in control of Southern state governments but they were deeply factionalized. The white Republicans split between the more radical "carpetbaggers" (new arrivals from the North), and the more moderate "scalawags" (native whites who had opposed the Confederacy). Meanwhile, the black Republicans were split between the more radical ex-slaves, and the more moderate ex-free blacks. State by state the multiple Republican factions battled verbally and sometimes physically, in the face of the better organized white coalition of "conservatives" (ex-Whigs) and Democrats.Thomas C. Holt, "Negro State Legislators in South Carolina during Reconstruction," in Howard N. Rabinowitz, ed. Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era (1982), pp. 223–248.

In the 1870s state by state Republicans lost power to the conservative-Democratic coalition, which gained control by violence of the entire South by 1877. In response to Radical Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) emerged in 1867 as a white-supremacist organization opposed to black civil rights and Republican rule. President Ulysses Grant's vigorous enforcement of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870 shut down the Klan, and it disbanded. But from 1868 onward in much of the South violence suppressed black voting and threatened black leaders. Rifle clubs had thousands of members. Although the KKK was suppressed, by 1874, paramilitary groups, such as the White League and Red Shirts disrupt the Republicans. Rable described them as the "military arm of the Democratic Party."George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction (2007), pp 72–95.

Reconstruction ended after the disputed 1876 election between Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden. With a compromise Hayes won the White House, the federal government withdrew its troops from the South, abandoning the freedmen to white conservative Democrats, who regained power in state governments.Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (1992) pp 3–54

Reconstruction as Second Founding of the United States According to political scientists Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow:Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow, Legacies of losing in American politics (U of Chicago Press, 2018), p. 2. The Founding, Reconstruction (often called "the second founding"), and the New Deal are typically heralded as the most significant turning points in the country’s history, with many observers seeing each of these as political triumphs through which the United States has come to more closely realize its liberal ideals of liberty and equality. Scholars such as Eric Foner have recently expanded the theme into full-length books.Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (2020) excerptIlan Wurman, The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment ( 2020) excerptSee also Garrett Epps, "Second Founding: The Story of the Fourteenth Amendment." Oregon Law Review 85 (2006) pp: 895–911 online. Black abolitionists played a key role by stressing that freed blacks needed equal rights after slavery was abolished.David Hackett Fischer, African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp 1–3.excerpt Constitutional provision for racial equality for free blacks was enacted by a Congress led by Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Lyman Trumbull.Paul Rego, Lyman Trumbull and the Second Founding of the United States (University Press of Kansas, 2022) pp. 1–2. excerpt. The "second founding" comprised the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. All citizens now had federal rights that could be enforced in federal court.

In a deep reaction called the Nadir of American race relations, after 1876 freedmen lost many of these rights and had second class citizenship in the era of lynching and Jim Crow laws.Rayford W. Logan,The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (1965). Finally in the 1950s the U.S. Supreme Court started to restore those rights. Under the public leadership of Martin Luther King, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, and the strategies of SCLC's Director of Direct Action, James Bevel, the nonviolent Civil Rights movement made the nation aware of the crisis, and under President Lyndon Johnson major civil rights legislation was passed in 1964, 1965, and 1968.Clay Risen, The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act (2014) pp. 2–5.

Organizations Many black organizations promoted the goal of equality after 1865.Hugh Davis, "We Will Be Satisfied with Nothing Less:" The African American Struggle for Equal Rights in the North during Reconstruction. (Cornell University Press, 2011).

The Liberator

The Liberator (1831–1865) was the hard-hitting highly influential abolitionist newspaper run by William Lloyd Garrison, a white man based in Boston. Of the 4,000 weekly subscribers, about 3,000 were blacks. Garrison denounced the United States Constitution as hopelessly pro slavery, and discouraged political activism as a result. Frederick Douglass at first followed Garrison, but broke with him in 1851, and promoted political action among free blacks in the North.Donald M. Jacobs, "William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator and Boston's Blacks, 1830–1865." New England Quarterly (1971): 259–277 online.

American Anti-Slavery Society

The interacial American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was formed in 1833, and grew rapidly to at least 100,000 members by 1840.

NERL

The all-black National Equal Rights League was founded in upstate New York in 1864 and had chapters across the North.See Christi M. Smith, "National Equal Rights League (1864–1921)" Black Past (2009) onlineHugh Davis, "We Will Be Satisfied With Nothing Less": The African American Struggle for Equal Rights in the North During Reconstruction (Cornell University Press, 2011).Hugh Davis, "The Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League and the Northern Black Struggle for Legal Equality, 1864–1877," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 126#4 (October 2002) pp: 611–634.

Union League The Union League was originally a network of elite local clubs in the North, founded in 1862 to support the Union war effort. After 1867 it included biracial local organizations across the South to promote racial equality and support the Republican Party. During Reconstruction the great majority of Southern blacks joined a local unit.Michael W. Fitzgerald, The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change During Reconstruction (1989) online

Niagara Movement

NAACP

LDF, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

A totally separate organization from the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) was set up by Thurgood Marshall in 1940; it became fully independent of the NAACP in 1957. While NAACP is a membership organization with chapters across the country, LDF is a law firm in New York City that focuses on civil rights lawsuits. It has handled many major cases, with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 the most famous. In Brown the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools violated the 14th Amendment.Steven C. Tauber, "The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the US Supreme Court's racial discrimination decision making." Social science quarterly (1999) 80#2: 325–340 online.Mark V. Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936–1961 (1994). Jack Greenberg (1924–2016) succeeded Thurgood Marshall as the Director-Counsel of the LDF from 1961 to 1984.Jack Greenberg, Crusaders In The Courts: How A Dedicated Band Of Lawyers Fought For The Civil Rights Revolution (1994).

Activists

Historians in recent years have compiled directories of black leaders in the 19th century.See Paul Finkelman, ed. Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895 (3 vol. 2006) 700 articles by experts.See also Eric Foner, Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 1993).

Richard Allen