1863
| Emancipation Proclamation frees nearly 4 million enslaved Africans.
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1864
| U.S. Congress ratifies the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.
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1865
| Freedman's Bureau established. In addition to providing medical, education and relocation services, Bureau begins distributing small plots of land abandoned during the Civil War to freedmen.
Former Confederate states issue laws restricting the civil rights of freedmen and women and issue "Black Codes" that attempt to control Black laborers.
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1866
| Congress passes the Southern Homestead Act, opening public lands in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida to all settlers regardless of race.
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1867
| First Reconstruction Act passed by Congress. White secret societies begin forming to address the "Negro problem" in the South.
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1868
| Congress passes the 14th Amendment, granting blacks full citizenship and equal civil rights.
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1874
| Land distributed by the Freedman's Bureau has netted freed blacks 160,960 acres in Florida, more than 350,000 acres in Georgia and 116 of 243 homesteads in Florida.
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1875
| Congress passes the Civil Rights Act granting blacks the right to equal treatment in inns, public conveniences, and public amusement places, and prohibits their exclusion from jury duty.
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1877
| Presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes agrees to remove federal troops from the South in return for support from Democratic Southern Congressmen. Upon Hayes' election, he removes troops from South Carolina and Louisiana, signaling the end of Reconstruction.
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1881
| Bill Mathis, Charlene's great-grandfather, is born.
Booker T. Washington goes to Alabama to start the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.
Tennessee enacts a law requiring racial segregation in railroad cars, initiating a segregation policy that will spread to most Southern states and become known as "Jim Crow" laws. |
