After the Civil War, newly freed slaves faced discrimination and hardship. Many became sharecroppers, farming land in exchange for a share of the crop, which often resulted in debt. Segregation was legal and widespread, separating public facilities by race. The Ku Klux Klan targeted blacks and their white supporters through intimidation and violence. Though outlawed over time, racism and prejudice persisted throughout the South for many decades.

1. After the Civil War: Life in the
South: 1866-1940

2. Reconstruction
• Lincoln assassinated-Andrew Johnson
takes over
• U.S. soldiers in the South to make sure
U.S. laws are being carried out.
• Southern people are losing property (no
money to pay U.S. property taxes)

3. 13 Amendment
th
Added to the Constitution after the Civil War.
It freed all slaves and made slavery
ILLEGAL in the U.S. forever.

4. 14 Amendment
th
All black people are now U.S. citizens and
should have the same RIGHTS as all
other U.S. citizens

5. 15 Amendment
th
Gives black MEN the right to vote

6. Better for blacks?
But where do they turn for jobs? How do
they support their families?

7. Sharecropping…a rough, hard life of farming for very little return….

8. These little black boys are part of a sharecropper
family that rented land to plant cotton in Arkansas
in 1925.

9. This white family in Tennessee
sharecropped on someone else’s land in
1929.

10. This white sharecropper in Lauderdale
County, Alabama picks cotton in 1929.

11. The children of sharecroppers such as this man in
Mississippi rarely had much ‘schooling’ or
education.

12. This very poor sharecropper family in Hale County,
Alabama lived in poor conditions in the early
1900s.

13. Doesn’t this old Alabama family make you
appreciate what you have today?

14. White and black sharecroppers take a break
together from working the farm fields in
Florence, Alabama.

15. This sharecropper’s boy was suffering from
a disease when this photo was taken. He
later died. He had no medical treatment.

16. This is a sharecropper family in Ohio.
Sharecropping wasn’t totally limited to the
poor southerners. Some poor Northern
families had to sharecrop as well.

17. This young Hispanic boy’s family
sharecropped in Texas.

18. This 12 year old girl in Louisiana washes
clothes on her family’s sharecropper farm.

19. This family is looking for work as sharecroppers in
Arkansas and are sleeping outside until they can
find work. Most southern families knew little else
besides farming.

20. Sharecropping was a hard life for the
thousands of people who experienced it.
There was always food but little money.

21. This Albertville farm family didn’t have life much
better in the early 1900s. This is Lincoln Mayo and
his wife on their farm.

22. Mr. Sanders farmed in DeKalb County near my
great grandfather’s farm at Collinsville. They
knew each other well.

23. Segregation and Prejudice …A
black man’s way of life from 1866-
1966

24. Segregation was legal after the civil war.
Notice which is the nicest fountain.

25. Many whites were honestly fearful of ‘free’ black people and certainly
didn’t want to think of them as ‘equal’ to them. Many people of both
races thought it was ‘the right thing to do’ to keep the races separate
from each other and in their ‘own places’.

26. Segregation of blacks and whites at
a train station

27. Segregation in Alabama
• Here are some examples of the Jim Crow laws in
Alabama.
• No person or corporation shall require any white female
nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either
public or private, in which Negro men are placed.
• The conductor of each passenger train is authorized and
required to assign each passenger to the car or the
division of the car, when it is divided by a partition,
designated for the race to which such passenger
belongs.
• Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for
such white or negro males reasonably accessible and
separate toilet facilities.

28. The KKK members rally here in
North Carolina.

29. The ‘original’ KKK targeted carpetbaggers and ‘Yankees’ in the south
during reconstruction “stealing” and “causing trouble”. (Notice the
hanging of white carpetbaggers in the cartoon drawing) Later, they
turned their frustrations over their own poverty and poor lives against
an easy target-black folks.
Northern
‘carpetbaggers’
trying to make
money off
Southern folk’s
problems after
the war.

30. This is a Klan ‘uniform’ from 1868. They hid their faces originally so the Union
(U.S.) army troops in the South during Reconstruction wouldn’t arrest them.
The original Klan actually faded away when Reconstruction ended but a new
organization began in the early 1900s. They did NOT want to see the South
change nor lose their family’s homeland to “Yankees” and “ Ex-Slaves”
This drawing shows two Confederate
officers from HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA

31. The KKK attracted members from all over the
country. Here, they are protesting in Washington
D.C. See the U.S. capitol in the far background?

32. Racism and prejudice against blacks was never just a ‘southern’ issue as you
may think. This is an OHIO governor candidate's ad promising no voting for
blacks if he is elected. If anything, northerners may have been more fearful of
black people’s differences because unlike southerners, they weren’t used to
being around black folks.

33. When the KKK was at it’s most popular, it had 6 million
members! And-a Northerner from Indiana-David
Stevenson was the head leader. David is in the dark robe
here meeting with leaders in the 1920s.

34. As the Klan began to get more and more violent and
aggressive in the early 1900s, many white people across
the country began to see it as a ‘bad club to be a part of’.
The KKK burned this black sharecropper’s home in Florida
in 1923.

35. This black man was lynched by the KKK for
supposedly attacking a white woman and
stealing her cattle.

36. Most men in the Klan really viewed themselves as doing
God’s work of keeping America a great place to live!! They
would kill anyone of any color--including whites-- that they
felt wasn’t ‘behaving right according to THEIR belief about
how the world should be’.

37. While the KKK does still exist even today, it is generally
recognized as a ‘hate group’ today and it’s popularity is not
what it once was. The numbers of members are small
across the country.
Current KKK member

38. This is what the ‘current KKK’ says
they believe in.
• Support of all U.S. soldiers
• Strong national defense
• No one can lose their home for not paying taxes to the
government
• Parents should discipline their children
• Everyone who can work should work
• Everyone not satisfied living under ‘white Christian rules’
is free to leave the U.S.
• All HIV positive people should be put into hospitals
• A law should make homosexuality illegal.
• Death penalty for rape and child abuse
• Abortion should be outlawed

39. Other ideas the KKK says that it
supports today:
• Everyone pays the same taxes
• Teach Christian values in the public schools
• Balance the budget
• Drug testing for welfare people
• Foreigners should not own property in the U.S.
• Promote appreciation of the historical white American
culture and government
• Encourage every American to own a gun
• American troops should enforce U.S. borders
• All hiring should be based on ability –not color of skin
• Stop foreign aid to other countries
• American government should put America and Her
people first.
• Recognize America was founded as a white Christian
nation