BACKLASH

The End Of Reconstruction

Booker T. Washington pursued his education and developed his programs in a time of growing racial hostility and violence. Southern states passed Black Codes which effectively returned freedmen to the status of slaves. Reconstruction Era Congresses soon outlawed the Codes, but new challenges to the freedom and safety of African Americans quickly emerged.

Secret white societies such as the Ku Klux Klan were founded to maintain white supremacy through campaigns of terrorism and violence. They burned and vandalized schools and churches built by African Americans. The federal government passed legislation to prohibit the most serious anti-black crimes, but it had little effect on the violence.

Jim Crow laws continued the social distance between the races by creating separate facilities for blacks and whites. Washington realized any plans for African American progress would have to consider the social conditions imposed by the laws and violence of the era.

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