First and Second Reconstructions

First and Second Reconstructions The First and Second Reconstructions held out the great promise of rectifying racial injustices in America. The First Reconstruction, emerging out of the chaos of the Civil War had as its goals equality for Blacks in voting, politics, and use of public facilities. The Second Reconstruction emerging out of the booming economy of the 1950's, had as its goals, integration, the end of Jim Crow and the more amorphous goal of …

…Southern Democrats were comprised of Southern elites and formed a coalition with Blacks to prevent poor Whites from passing economic initiatives such as free silver, the break up of monopolies, and labor laws. Gerald Gaither, Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry In the New South (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1972) p.299. 15 The Coalition between poor Whites was based on a paternalistic order as C. Vann Woodward explains, "Blacks continued to vote in large numbe