The Equal Rights Struggle in the 1870s

Abstract

This chapter concentrates on the first half of the 1870s. It examines how, following the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, northern blacks sought to work within the Republican Party at the state level to gain equal access to public schools and, at the federal level, to pressure congressional Republicans to pass Charles Sumner's Civil Rights Bill—especially its school integration clause. The chapter also analyzes the impact of the northern black vote on the outcome of elections and the growing frustration of northern blacks with their treatment by white Republicans. Perhaps the most devastating setback for the northern black equal rights movement occurred when, after years of relentless lobbying by African Americans on behalf of Sumner's Civil Rights Bill, congressional Republicans decided to remove the crucial school integration clause and a few other clauses from the bill in order to ensure its passage before the Democrats assumed control of the House of Representatives in 1875.