Reconstruction-Era Constitutions and Civil Rights Laws
| ![]() Freedman's Bureau, Memphis, Tennessee (Harper's Weekly, 1866) - courtesy New York Public Library and Wikimedia Commons
Charles Drake, leader of Missouri radical Unionists during Reconstruction - courtesy Library of Congress “[A]dmit us into the sanctum sanctorum of justice – the jury box – give us a fair show in the courts. The idea of giving a negro justice, in a court where the judge has sucked the milk of prejudice from his mother’s breast, where the lawyers, though they may be the most thorough radicals extant, honestly believe me immeasurably their inferior, and the jurors there assembled … do not believe that I have any right to be protected from the encroachment of that class looked upon as my superiors.” - William Gray, in 1868 Arkansas constitutional convention “The question before the Convention … is that of political equality merely. The people will arrange the question of social equality for themselves, irrespective of anything that we may do.” –Isaiah Montgomery, in 1868 Arkansas constitutional convention “We are under imperative obligations to do this [educate black children], from a sense of justice to them, and from a regard to our own safety … We do not expect, and have not sought, to obliterate what has been termed an ‘antipathy of the races,’ by constitutional or legislative enactments.” – Education Committee report, Missouri constitutional convention, 1865 |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 4. MOUNTAIN SOUTH LEGAL HISTORY > 4.3 Mountain South: Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877) > 4.3.1 Mountain South (1861-1877): Law and War >