African-Americans
Reconstruction/Progressive Era - Page 2
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The end of slavery caused the social system within the white and African-American communities to readjust themselves. Ex-slaves were seen as lower class citizens and the laws of the 19th century denied them equal status to wages and opportunities to improve their status in life - an education. Therefore, the Freedmen's Bureau shipped in instructors from the American Missionary Association to teach freedmen and their children. Schools were set up at Helena, Little Rock, Pine Bluff, the White River and DeVall's Bluff. Teachers instructed pupils in the basic skills of writing, reading and mathematics, as well as instruction in morality and religious principle. In Little Rock, an impressive attendance rate of 130 students per day demonstrated the importance and excellence of these schools.
African-American society and economics changed dramatically as a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction. After freedom, the ex-slaves sought the right to protection from violence, the right of the basic necessities of life, and the right to own their own land. The contract system of working the land was the primary arrangement after the war that allowed whites to maintain control over the freedmen. The landowner claimed legal rights over the crops raised by the freedmen in exchange for wages. For example, at the plantation of Peter McCollum in Ouachita County, the freedmen were to work from daylight to feed the livestock, work the fields, "submit cheerfully to the…rules and regulations," and were fined money for breaking any rules. In exchange, McCollum would feed, house, clothe, and protect his workers. A gentleman in Lafayette County noticed that little had changed since the days of slavery, "They [the freedmen] are to labor as they formerly did." Sharecropping and tenant farming was firmly established in post-war Arkansas.
Throughout these social and economic changes, many people rose to the forefront of African-American leadership in Arkansas. Charlotte Stephens, an ex-slave who attended Oberlin College, became Little Rock's first African-American teacher and taught school from 1869 to 1939. The first African-American legislators began working at the State House during Reconstruction and helped to fight for civil rights in Arkansas. It was a tough fight since the Arkansas General Assembly did not chose to recognize the rights of ex-slaves. They refused to accept the Fourteenth Amendment, which made African-Americans citizens of the United States. When the U.S. Congress and the state government in Arkansas was turned over to the Radical Republicans in 1868, African-Americans gained more rights than they had ever had in the state. Optimism for the African-American community could be found in the statements of William Grey of Helena when he said, "Our future is sure..here we have lived, suffered, fought, bled and many have died. We will not leave the graves of our fathers, but here we will rear pour children; here we will educate them to a higher destiny…we will be exalted…" Many African-Americans held a variety of offices in government including justices of the peace, constables, sheriffs, county clerks, assessors and militia officers.
