The Reconstruction Acts established military rule over Southern states until new governments could be formed. They also limited some former Confederate officials’ and military officers’ rights to vote and to run for public office. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed African American men the right to vote.

Men like Hiram Revels, Robert Elliot, and Joseph Rainey were part of the vanguard of black political leadership in this period.

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was an American publisher and politician, a Union Army officer, and the first African American to become governor of a U.S. state. A Republican, Pinchback served as the 24th Governor of Louisiana from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.

Table 4: Black Officeholders during Reconstruction: State and Major Black State Officials

While many Southern whites embraced the economic and political opportunities of Reconstruction (becoming known as “scalawags” as a result) many also sought to roll back the gains made by African Americans. They resorted to terror in the form of organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, voter fraud, and other means.

The Radical Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the First Reconstruction Act, the Second Reconstruction Act, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

How many African Americans from the South were elected to the US Senate during Reconstruction quizlet? Five African American senators and 11 African American congressmen were elected from the South.

Widely recognized as the most prominent figure of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. was instrumental in executing nonviolent protests, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Compromise of 1877: The End of Reconstruction The Compromise of 1876 effectively ended the Reconstruction era. Southern Democrats’ promises to protect civil and political rights of blacks were not kept, and the end of federal interference in southern affairs led to widespread disenfranchisement of blacks voters.

Reconstruction was a success in that it restored the United States as a unified nation: by 1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government.

As a result of Johnson’s leniency, many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the “black codes,” which were designed to restrict freed Black peoples’ activity and ensure their availability as a labor force.

Why did southerners oppose Reconstruction? Poor southern whites did not experience the improvement to their economic situation as they had hoped. Reconstruction governments were corrupt. Southern whites could not accept the idea of blacks’ equality.

It was just a blink of an eye, but as W.E.B. Du Bois noted in his towering 1935 study, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, Pinchback was the only black governor of any state during Reconstruction and remained the only one until Douglas Wilder’s election in Virginia in 1989.

The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition and did not welcome it. During the years after the war, black and white teachers from the North and South, missionary organizations, churches and schools worked tirelessly to give the emancipated population the opportunity to learn.

Pinchback was serving as president pro tem of the Louisiana senate when, in 1871, the state’s first black lieutenant governor, Oliver Dunn, died. This left Pinchback to take his place.

In all, 16 African Americans served in the U.S. Congress during Reconstruction; more than 600 more were elected to the state legislatures, and hundreds more held local offices across the South.