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Black Belt (U.S. region) The location of the Black Belt (sociological sense) in the United States. 2000 Census Population Ancestry Map, with African American ancestry in purple. The Black Belt is a region of the Southern United States. Although the term originally described the prairies and dark soil of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi,[1] it has long been used to describe a broad agricultural region in the American South characterized by a history of plantation agriculture in the 19th century and a high percentage of African Americans in the population.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, as many as one million enslaved African Americans were taken there in a forced migration to work as laborers for the region's cotton plantations. After having lived for several generations in the area, many stayed as rural workers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers after the American Civil War and emancipation. African Americans as percentage of local population, 2000. W. Migratory waves: Separatism: Other: Help with Du Bois/1876 question. The presidential election of 1876 resulted in a controversial result with the underdog Rutherford B. Hayes defeating the more popular Samuel F. Tilden thanks to a congressional compromise referred to as the Compromise of 1877. As part of this compromise the South was promised that the North would remove federal troops from the South and Reconstruction would officially end.

What this meant for the South was that they could go back to discriminating against blacks (now freedmen and no longer under slavery). The South LOVED this part of the compromise because most southerners hated the fact that blacks were now freed and threatening to become co-equals with whites. After the events of 1876 and 1877's compromise blacks felt they had been sold out by the U.S. government and were now forced to live under what came to be known as Jim Crow laws. Since political power was now more allusive blacks now had to look elsewhere to find ways to gain social prestige and empowerment. Rutherford B. Hayes - 1877 compromise. Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was the 19th President of the United States (1877–1881).

As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Hayes believed in meritocratic government, equal treatment without regard to race, and improvement through education. He ordered federal troops to quell the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. He implemented modest civil service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. Hayes kept his pledge not to run for re-election, retired to his home in Ohio, and became an advocate of social and educational reform.

Family and early life[edit] Childhood and family history[edit] Hayes's boyhood home in Delaware, Ohio Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822, the son of Rutherford Hayes Jr. and Sophia Birchard. Civil War[edit] Harlem Renaissance - Major representatives of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid-1930s. [citation needed] Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed[by whom?] Between 1924 (the year that Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression).

Background to Harlem[edit] Development of African-American community in Harlem[edit] Contemporary silent black and white documentary short. During the early portion of the 20th century, Harlem was the destination for immigrants from around the country, attracting both people seeking work from the South, and an educated class who made the area a center of culture, as well as a growing "Negro" middle class. The Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights and protects against abuse of government authority. The Amendment requires that felonies be tried only upon indictment by a grand jury; the Grand Jury Clause is one of the few provisions of the Bill of Rights not held to have been incorporated to the states, most of which have replaced grand juries.

The Amendment also provides several trial protections, including the right against self-incrimination (held to also apply to custodial interrogations and before most government bodies) as well as the right to be tried only once ("double jeopardy") in federal court for the same offense. The Amendment also has a Due Process Clause (similar to the one in the 14th Amendment) as well as an implied equal protection requirement (Bolling v.

Sharpe). Finally, the Amendment requires that the power of eminent domain be coupled with "just compensation" for those whose property is taken. Text[edit] The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 — Open Yale Courses. Professor David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History Description This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. The primary goal of the course is to understand the multiple meanings of a transforming event in American history. Those meanings may be defined in many ways: national, sectional, racial, constitutional, individual, social, intellectual, or moral. Four broad themes are closely examined: the crisis of union and disunion in an expanding republic; slavery, race, and emancipation as national problem, personal experience, and social process; the experience of modern, total war for individuals and society; and the political and social challenges of Reconstruction.

Texts Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War. David Blight, Why the Civil War Came. Charles R. Drew G. E. Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877. James M. Michael P. Films: Requirements Grading. Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The Lost Cause is the American literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditionalist white society of the U.S. South to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War of 1861–1865.[1] It forms an important aspect of the Commemoration of the American Civil War. History[edit] Many white Southerners were devastated economically, emotionally, and psychologically by the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865.

Before the war, many Southerners proudly felt that their rich military tradition would allow them to prevail in the conflict. When this did not happen, white Southerners sought consolation in attributing their loss to factors beyond their control, such as treachery. The term Lost Cause first appeared in the title of an 1866 book by the historian Edward A.

Early's original inspiration for his views may have come from General Robert E. New South[edit] Religious revivals[edit] Tenets[edit] Further adoption[edit] 20th century usage[edit] Slavery. Slavery is a legal or economic system under which people are treated as property.[1] While laws and systems vary, as property, slaves may be bought and sold. Slaves can be held from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation. Historically, slavery was institutionally recognized by most societies; in more recent times, slavery has been outlawed in all countries, but it continues through the practices of debt bondage, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage.[2] Slavery is officially illegal in all countries,[3][4] but there are still an estimated 20 million to 36 million slaves worldwide.[5][6][7] Mauritania was the last jurisdiction to officially outlaw slavery (in 1981/2007), but about 10% to 20% of its population is estimated to live in slavery.[8][9] Terminology Types Chattel slavery Bonded labor.

Frederick Douglass (Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895) Africans in America/Part 4/Frederick Douglass speech. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too Ñ great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.... ...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?

Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? W. E. B. Du Bois. William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B. " Du Bois (pronounced /duːˈbɔɪz/ doo-BOYZ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After graduating from Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Racism was the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment.

Du Bois was a prolific author. Early life Great Barrington's primarily European American community treated Du Bois generally well. University education Wilberforce and University of Pennsylvania. Ain't I a Woman. Modern History Sourcebook: Sojourner Truth: "Ain't I a Woman? ", December 1851 Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Ain't I A Woman? Delivered 1851 Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say. This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook . Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Mechanicsville, Virginia. Mechanicsville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Hanover County, Virginia, United States. The population was 36,348 during the 2010 census. History[edit] The area was settled by English colonists starting in the 17th century. Rural Plains, also known as Shelton House, is a house built in the early decades of the eighteenth century.

It is now owned and operated by the National Park Service as one of the sites of the Richmond National Battlefield Park. In "Old Mechanicsville" stands a stone windmill, now a landmark in the village. The building was constructed as a "Heritage Bank" branch office in the 1970s. Mechanicsville is associated with several major battles and numerous minor skirmishes during the American Civil War. Beaver Dam Creek[edit] The first was the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek, which began on June 26, 1862. Gaines' Mill[edit] The Battle of Gaines' Mill was the third of the Seven Days Battles, occurring just east of Mechanicsville. Cold Harbor[edit] Demographics[edit]