Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/227

Rh In 1866, nearly 100,000 Negroes were in the schools under 1300 teachers and schools for Negroes had been opened in nearly all the southern states. A second Freedmen’s Bureau act was passed extending the work of the Bureau, and the Freedmen’s Bank which had been started in 1865 and had by 1866 twenty branches and $300,000 in savings.

Congress came to blows with President Johnson. His plan of reconstruction with white male suffrage was repudiated and the 14th Amendment was proposed by Congress which was designed to force the South to accept Negro suffrage on penalty of losing a proportionate amount of their representation in Congress. The 14th Amendment was long delayed and did not in fact become a law until July, 1868. Meantime, Congress adopted more drastic measures. By the Reconstruction Acts, the first of which passed March 2nd, the South was divided into five military districts, Negro suffrage was established for the constitutional conventions and the 14th Amendment made a prerequisite for readmission of states to the Union.

What was the result? No language has been spared to describe the results of Negro suffrage as the worst imaginable. Every effort of historical and social science and propaganda have supported