Reconstruction Letter to the Editor

Dear Mr. Editor,

When will this outrageous, falsely perpetuated discrimination end?!

From a Former Slave Woman, Eleanora Lee

I am a former slave who had lived a life of hardships and difficulty, a life of waking up early and going to bed late at night, due to the biddings of white men. Nonetheless, I survived this agonizing work with the thought that the day of liberation would finally arrive! However, Reconstruction is a warped concept. What was meant to help my people has truly done nothing to help me. Instead, I am treated just as I was before. What rights have I, a freed woman, received? The laws meant to protect me, constrict me. The division within the government has done nothing to achieve the goals of unifying the country amicably, reviving the Southern economy, and building equality among the populace. This Reconstruction business is nothin’ but a sham!

Yes, I agree that Reconstruction did grant my people freedom and political rights. The new Constitutional amendments did grant suffrage rights to black men. Beginning with the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished and protected blacks from slavery and involuntary servitude, followed by the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in June of 1868, which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, as well as equal protection of laws to all citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in February of 1870, stated that the governments within the United States could not prevent a citizen from voting based on race, skin color, or previous condition of servitude. Through these amendments, our black brothers were granted some semblance of political rights that were held from us in the past. Several laws, such as the Enforcement Act of 1870 as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1875, were also passed in an attempt to safeguard and combat against attacks on our newly granted right of suffrage and equal treatment in public accommodation, transportation, and more. The government...