NARRATOR
In March 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War, the United States Congress decided to bring racial equality to the South. For the last all-white legislature in North Carolina, it was the beginning of the end. They threw a wild party in the state capitol. We had "the very best liquor, [and] ice, lemons and sugar,"wrote one state senator. "The whole capital was in an uproar." Under Congress' new Radical Reconstruction plan, military rule would be imposed on the South. White state lawmakers would be swept from their seats. And the unthinkable: black men, many of them former slaves, would have the right to vote and run for office. "We have lost all hope of escaping the vengeance of the Northern people," a senator wrote "and are preparing for the worst." That fall, southern blacks embraced Congress' plan. In Louisiana, about a hundred black men approached the town of Natchitoches, ready to defend their new rights with sticks and guns. They had come to cast their ballots. Scores of Union soldiers, many of them black, stood guard at the polls. It was a scene repeated throughout the South.

FONER
This really was a remarkable leap in the dark for world history. It's the first large-scale experiment in interracial democracy that had existed anywhere.

AYERS
This may be the most radical single change that emerges out of this entire era, to go from being an enslaved person, to not merely a citizen, but to being a voter and a holder of office.

NARRATOR
In Georgia, Tunis Campbell was among the first blacks to run for political office. Right after the war, he had set up an independent black colony in the Sea Islands of Georgia -- and declared it off-limits to whites.

DUNCAN
Tunis Campbell was impressive in appearance. He was 6 feet tall, habitually dressed in a 3-piece suit with a bow tie, carried an umbrella, a top hat. The planter class is in awe of him. But African Americans are also in awe of him. And he uses that to great advantage.

NARRATOR
Trained as a minister, he could reach into the heart of a community.

DUNCAN
He often stood behind the pulpits in black churches on Sundays and said, "Under the new acts of Congress, we're going to be allowed to vote. You're going to be protected in that vote. We have a great black majority in this district. We are going to elect black judges. We are going to elect black sheriffs. We are going to elect black senators."

BLIGHT
The right to vote for black people was an almost spiritual experience. It was a physical manifestation of their freedom. It meant that somebody was actually recognizing them as a political human being. The right to vote was like breathing life into them.

NARRATOR
Many white Southerners boycotted the elections.

AYERS
They say the government that's created by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington for proud, independent, enlightened men, is now going to be occupied by former slaves who cannot read. This must be an injustice, they say. This must be a farce.

FONER
At this time only five northern states -- all of them in New England, with very small black populations -- give African Americans the right to vote. Ohio doesn't. New York only gives a tiny number the right to vote. Pennsylvania doesn't. Illinois doesn't.

AYERS
And white southerners feel that this is just one more example of the hypocrisy of Reconstruction, that white northerners are willing to inflict upon white southerners things they would not tolerate in their own home states.

NARRATOR
When the votes were counted, Tunis Campbell had won a seat in the Georgia state senate with an overwhelming majority.

WALKER
Black voting carried with it an enormous meaning. It meant that political power was going to be shared between blacks and whites. This is a very frightening thing for many white southerners because they have, in effect, lost control over what they had deemed to be their birthright, which is the right to run these governments.

NARRATOR
One white southerner uttered words of warning: "Let not your pride flatter you into the belief that you ever can or ever will govern the white men of the South."