Black History: History in an Hour

one’s grandfather had voted then one was exempt from these requirements. But all black grandfathers would have been slaves and so would have been denied the vote.

Mississippi led the way, stating that to be eligible to vote, citizens had to be paying the poll tax, pass a literacy test, or own property.

And with white resentment came terrorism, and in particular, the formation of the feared Ku Klux Klan (pictured above). Founded in 1865, the KKK murdered, lynched, and whipped the Southern blacks, burnt down their homes and, at times of elections, intimidated the black vote into virtual silence

possessions that what they had could fit into one small carpet bag

African-Americans take to politics, many migrating south from the Northern states. Cynical Southerners called them ‘carpetbaggers’ because they arrived from the North with so few

he Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in March 1870, required every state to legally recognize the black vote, that no citizen could be denied the vote ‘on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude’

It took two years, but finally, on 9 July 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment came into being. African-Americans were now recognized as American citizens

Fourteenth Amendment which defined American citizenship to include African-Americans and gave them the vote.

Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, believed that unity of the Union still took precedent over the welfare of the blacks. He made amends with the former Confederate States, returned them their lands, and permitted the Southern states to pass a set of laws within their own territories, the Black Codes, which aimed to deprive African-Americans full citizen rights and restrict their economic freedom

owever, on 14 April 1865, five days after the surrender of the South, Lincoln was shot by Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth, while attending the theatre in Washington DC. Lincoln died the following day, aged fifty-six.