Civil Rights Movement

The Reconstruction Era

It was not until the Civil War that anything looking like federal involvement in civil rights and education took place, with the creation of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau). The Bureau's statutory charge, “the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from rebel states,” enabled it to perform a variety of educational and social welfare functions. Its greatest success was education. It established or supervised many kinds of schools: day, night, Sunday, and industrial, as well as colleges. Many of the nation's Black colleges were founded with aid from the Bureau, including Howard University, Hampton Institute, St. Augustine's College, and Fisk University, to name a few. This initial effort on the part of the Freedman's Bureau to assist Blacks was tainted by, among other factors, its role in establishing the oppressive system of Southern labor contracts. With few exceptions, federal protection of Blacks via the Freedmen's Bureau terminated in 1868.

Congress's other Reconstruction legislation employed a variety of techniques to protect civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Force Act of 1870 imposed penalties on those who enforced discriminatory features of the Southern Black Codes, and the 1870 act made it a crime to conspire to hinder a citizen's exercise of [Page 133]federal rights. The 1870 act also provided special protection for Black Voting Rights Act and the Force Act of 1871 went further by providing for the appointment of federal supervisors to scrutinize voter registration and election practices. The Civil Rights Act of 1871 authorized civil actions and additional criminal penalties against those who violated constitutional rights and authorized the president to use federal forces to suppress insurrections or conspiracies to deprive “any portion or class of… people” of federal rights.

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