What Can Be Done For Blacks, Post-Reconstruction?

Between 1877 and 1900, what can be done for black civil rights, protection, equality, and so forth by the government of the United States and President? Similarly, what effects would such things have?
 
The proper interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure all U.S. citizens had the rights the federal constitution guaranteed.

IIRC the Supreme Court, in a display of total moronity, made some ruling that said the 14th Amendment didn't say what it really said, and it took several decades to reinvent the wheel based on some other clause in the 14th Amendment.

IIRC there was another amendment (the 15th?) that said states that disenfranchised certain portions of the population would lose that much representation in Congress. Enforce that and see Mississippi squirm as it loses 45% of its representatives (only 5% of the black population, which was about half of Mississippi, was registered to vote pre-Civil Rights Movement).

A federal anti-lynching law, if it could survive the Supreme Court, would also work. One could defend such a law by pointing out the complete lack of concern Southern state and local governments had for lynching.

Given the racism of the time, it could be passed after a notorious lynching of a white person (Leo Frank, for example, plus I think 25% of lynching victims were white, often for the crime of "informing").
 
The proper interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure all U.S. citizens had the rights the federal constitution guaranteed.

This is all a neat idea, but IMO is basically impossible, because the end of Reconstruction meant the terrorists had won in the South, and any hope for rule of law applying to blacks was gone for decades.
 
Off the top, I'd say 40 Acres and a Mule. As long as the economic levers and the land ownership remained with the white planter class, blacks were going to inevitably be disenfranchised.

To allow blacks to be full citizens, you'd have to break the power of the elites. Simple as that.
 
No Compromise of 1876. And put some teeth in the KKK Act by making federal prosecution for murders related to civil rights violations instead of leaving it to local easily intimidated juries.

If you expand 40 acres and a mule to include all Union vets, you'd have plenty of white ex Union soldiers alongside Black Union vets getting land, both with a financial and political stake in seeing Reconstruction succeed.
 
Off the top, I'd say 40 Acres and a Mule. As long as the economic levers and the land ownership remained with the white planter class, blacks were going to inevitably be disenfranchised.

To allow blacks to be full citizens, you'd have to break the power of the elites. Simple as that.

Land wasn't the problem, most newly freed blacks eventually got land of their own already IOTL.

The problem was they were driven off of their new land by terrorists.
 
This is all a neat idea, but IMO is basically impossible, because the end of Reconstruction meant the terrorists had won in the South, and any hope for rule of law applying to blacks was gone for decades.

There was a very stupid Supreme Court ruling on this matter. What year was it?

(Plessy vs. Ferguson was in 1896, IIRC, but I don't think it dealt with incorporation.)

If that went in the other direction, all it would take would be a reassertion of federal power on the subject.

Also, IIRC the Klan had been suppressed before the end of Reconstruction. "Obnoxious recalcitrant state governments had won in the South" might be better.
 
Off the top, I'd say 40 Acres and a Mule. As long as the economic levers and the land ownership remained with the white planter class, blacks were going to inevitably be disenfranchised.

To allow blacks to be full citizens, you'd have to break the power of the elites. Simple as that.

That'd work.

(filler)
 
The time when former slaves could have been compensated and the planter class destroyed was the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

Someone said that blacks eventually got land, I am pretty sure that most were share croppers- not exactly full land ownership.

Still if it were clear that voting rights would be enforced by Federal institutions things would be different. Compare the way some populists became extreme racists in the last years of the 19th century to George Wallace seeking black votes in the later part of his career.
 
The time when former slaves could have been compensated and the planter class destroyed was the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

Someone said that blacks eventually got land, I am pretty sure that most were share croppers- not exactly full land ownership.

1. Yep. Then you'd know who owned what, who oppressed whom, etc.

2. Sharecropping is below even renting--at least tenant farmers owned their own tools. All sharecroppers did was work in exchange for a percent of the crop.

I think a lot of Southern blacks came to own land (I recall the 25% figure somewhere, though I can't recall where), but a lot of them were bullied off it by the Klan and other scumbags.
 
I agree with the fulfilment of such things suggested as full black (& poor white) land ownership, effective enforcement of the 14th Amendment, & a strong federal anti-lynching law- I'd also add a greater & stronger federal govt presence in the South (federal troops, US Marshals, etc) & the concurrent systematic development of racially integrated & well-armed local militias compirising blacks & white Unionists (which did occur OTL in some areas on a small scale, such as with the New Orleans metropiltan police)
 
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