Human beings eligible to participate in America's society and culture. However, racism denied them the privileges of the American citizen. Although they were no longer slaves, they were still considered to be savages, unintelligent, and the lowest class of person in the United States.

Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The Proclamation set the American slave population free. However, it did not indicate how new Black citizens would be incorporated into the free society. Emancipation would redefine how blacks saw themselves and their aspirations, and it would redefine the labor system. Blacks believed that they could equally share in prosper

Blacks were tortured both mentally and physically in their struggle for freedom. Racism prevented Reconstruction's incorporation of the free black into white American society. The disenfranchisement of the black citizen pervaded America's culture and politics. Racism allowed the south to remain a one-party system ruled by a regressive privileged few who used violence and deception to repress internal dissension. The black American desired and deserved independence from racial bigotry, caste, and segregation.

Hideous crimes committed by both Southern and Northern whites against blacks mostly went unpunished. "In one Democratic Alabama county in 1870, a black woman was brutally beaten by a group of whites was ordered to raise $16.45 for court costs before her complaint was heard. After she did so, the judge released the offenders and instructed the injured woman to drop the matter or face a jail term" (p.182). At the first inclination of black progress, violence raised its ugly head. The emergence of a hate groups and mobs policed elections and occasions where blacks as a race could challenged the racist institutions of the past. "The Ku Klux Klan emerges as a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy"(p.184). The K.K.K. wanted full control of the blacks as a labor force. The primary objective of the K.K.K. was to weaken Reconstruction and reinstate racial inferiority in every condition of Southern life. Murders and lynchings were a standard form of coercion to terrorize blacks back into submission. Many blacks lost their lives if a politician was sympathetic to the black cause or if the threat of widespread black vote for a certain candidate could determine the outcome of an election. Beatings, whippings, and raids on black homes continued throughout the South. Educated blacks and black leaders were persecuted and killed in order to persuade other blacks to refrain from objecting to longstanding policies.

Southern states as a whole began to encourage literacy and education. The question arose as to where the blacks would fit in. Some proposed that the state provide funds for the education of blacks. "Delaware, Kentucky, and Maryland Democrats initially made no provision at all for black education, then ordered that these schools that these schools be financed by taxes on black parents" (183). Given their racist atti

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1651
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)