The struggle of blacks in the South following the Civil War was both a unique social situation and one reflective of the dilemmas facing working class white people on both sides of the Mason Dixon line. What African Americans endured, particularly as the war had ended legal sanctions of slavery, was a traumatic infusion into undefined roles within mainstream society, and roles which largely relied on the practices of the past. It was a complicated, frustrating, and perpetually varying scenario, and unique unto itself. Nonetheless, as the treatment Southern blacks received was inextricably linked to a pervasively low social standing, working class whites were not spared similar modes of treatment, both overt and more sociologically subtle. Both suffered from being trapped by the self-perpetuating constraints of deprivation.

Racial and Racist Views

Before any worthwhile assessment can be made of what blacks experienced in the post-war years, an understanding must be in place as to how complex racism itself inherently is. Modern conceptions define it as a usually hateful, if not outright violent, bias. However, viewing a person as different, or even inferior, by virtue of race or ethnicity does not automatically translate to active suppression or even dislike. The bias is in place, certainly, and unjustifiable by virtue of its cause, yet the manifestations may take many forms.

America’s founding fathers, for instance, are acknowledged as humanists and men dedicated to encouraging enlightened, liberating, civilized thought. Many owned slaves, however, and several certainly went to war to protect their constitutional right to do so. As is notoriously known today, Thomas Jefferson and his family enjoyed intimate relations with slaves, and Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles, “…had children by both his wife and his slave (Elizabeth Hemings)” (Wilkins, 2002, p. 99).  Lesser known today is Abraham Lincoln’s affection for racist entertainment:  “Abraham Lincoln stole away from the pressures of duty during the Civil War to see blackface shows” (Roediger, 1999, p. 116).

The point is that the intrinsic wrongness of racism does not, as it did not then, necessarily reveal itself in unfair or harsh treatment. Nonetheless, Southern blacks after 1865 were placed in a strange and precarious position. Legally free, yet constrained by all the societal mores and attitudes that had empowered slavery, there was an inevitable backlash from their entry into mainstream society. More specifically, it simply did not occur because neither white nor black was prepared to allow it to happen.

Employment and Social Realities

For basic reasons, Southern blacks did not enjoy anything on the order of true independence following their emancipation. A history of oppression and slavery had equipped them in no way to take a place in the communities within the South of the reconstruction era. As employment frequently dictates social acceptance, Southern blacks were as stratified after the Civil War as, in a sense, they were before it, for the limitations were that extreme.

On one front, the influx of the carpetbaggers and the ruthless determination of Northern merchants to exploit the spoils of the conquered territories were not conducive to providing opportunity, and working class whites of the era were just as victimized. It was not overt racism impeding them, but sheer economic manipulation; when there are few job opportunities available, the most demeaning terms are accepted.

As regards the Southern blacks, there was another obstacle, and one linked to the deprivations they had previously endured: a lack of education. In the late nineteenth century, enormous tides of European immigrants were settling in both the North and the South, and these eager individuals provided the economies with a largely white workforce willing to accept virtually any employment, in order to secure a place in America. Moreover, they could read:

“Immigrants from most countries had far higher literacy rates than did Southern blacks…” (Margo, 1994, p. 126.). In the South of those years, in fact, the lower class white person was as well far more likely to be illiterate, or not as literate, as the immigrant moving in.

For quite a long time, and largely due to both the past legal status of slavery and its corollary denial of civil rights such as education, Southern blacks were distanced from the turbulent reconstructive efforts occurring in the South, save as little more than a variation on the old slave trade. Some movement was made by the blacks, to emphasize a breaking of the slave tradition, and this took emphatic form in a dismissal of the religion previously forced upon them: “Thousands of blacks abandoned the Catholic church after the Civil War. One study indicated that 65,000 blacks left the church in just one section of Louisiana…” (Southern, 1996, p. 68). They would predominantly develop Baptist leanings, and draw together within the churches of their own, exclusively black and typically impoverished, communities.

For both Southern black and working class white, the Civil War actually served to define a more harsh reality; namely, racism was only one element in objectifying a class of people. Barriers of poor to no education, few resources, and no connections to the upper tiers of the society impeded people regardless of race. While this is not to suggest that the working class whites endured the same severe treatment as had the Southern blacks, there are irrefutable connections between them, and they go to revealing how sheer economic concerns, more than anything, define how any class or race will be perceived and treated, as these same factors reinforce the disparities already present. The Southern black, freed from slavery, was required to exert himself as strenuously as the working class white, in order to gain any true independent stature.