page_title: Racism in the United States
section_title: Reconstruction Era
hierarchical_section_title: Racism in the United States / African Americans / Reconstruction Era to World War II / Reconstruction Era
context_page_description: Racism in the United States has existed since the colonial era, and it involved laws, practices and actions that discriminated against various groups or otherwise adversely impacted them based on their race or ethnicity, while most white Americans enjoyed legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights which were denied to members of other races and minority groups. European Americans—particularly affluent white Anglo-Saxon Protestants—enjoyed advantages in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure throughout American history. Groups which were especially impacted by racism included non-Protestant immigrants from Europe, including the Irish, Poles, and Italians, who were often subjected to xenophobic exclusion and other forms of ethnicity-based discrimination in American society until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Historically, Hispanics have experienced continuous racism in the United States despite many having European ancestry.
context_section_description: After the Civil War, the 13th amendment in 1865, formally abolishing slavery, was ratified. Furthermore, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which broadened a range of civil rights to all persons born in the United States. Despite this, the emergence of "Black Codes", sanctioned acts of subjugation against blacks, continued to bar African-Americans from due civil rights. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only, and in 1868 the effort toward civil rights was underscored with the 14th amendment which granted citizenship to blacks. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 followed, which was eliminated in a decision that undermined federal power to thwart private racial discrimination. Nonetheless, the last of the Reconstruction Era amendments, the 15th amendment promised voting rights to African-American men (previously only white men of property could vote), and these cumulative federal efforts, African-Americans began taking advantage of enfranchisement. African-Americans began voting, seeking office positions, utilizing public education.
  By the end of Reconstruction in the mid 1870s, violent white supremacists came to power via paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts and the White League and imposed Jim Crow laws which deprived African-Americans of voting rights by instituting systemic and discriminatory policies of unequal racial segregation. Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with the passage and enforcement of Jim Crow laws, along with the posting of signs which were used to show blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. For those places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were dealt with. Segregated facilities extended from white-only schools to white-only graveyards.
caption: The mob-style lynching of Will James, Cairo, Illinois, 1909. A crowd of thousands watched the lynching.[41]
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