Editing Reconstruction era (section)

==African American officeholders==
[[File:Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina LCCN97504690.jpg|alt=Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina|thumb|"Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina"]]
Republicans took control of all Southern state governorships and state legislatures, except for Virginia.<ref group="lower-roman">Georgia had a Republican governor and legislature, but the Republican hegemony was tenuous at best, and Democrats continued to win presidential elections there. See {{Cite web |last1=Jackson |first1=Ed |last2=Pou |first2=Charles |title=This Day in Georgia History: March 28 |url=http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/tdgh-mar/mar28.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109203144/http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/tdgh-mar/mar28.htm |archive-date=January 9, 2009 |website=Today in Georgia History}}; ''cf.'' [[Rufus Bullock]].</ref> The Republican coalition elected [[African American officeholders from the end of the Civil War until before 1900|numerous African Americans]] to local, state, and national offices; though they did not dominate any electoral offices, Black men as representatives voting in state and federal legislatures marked a drastic social change. At the beginning of 1867, no African American in the South held political office, but within three or four years "about 15 percent of the officeholders in the South were Black—a larger proportion than in 1990". Most of those offices were at the local level.{{sfnp|McPherson|1992|p=19}} In 1860, Blacks constituted the majority of the population in Mississippi and South Carolina, 47% in Louisiana, 45% in Alabama, and 44% in Georgia and Florida,<ref>{{cite web |last=Willis |first=John C. |title=America's Civil War: Date of Secession Compared to 1860 Black Population |url=http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/willis/Civil_War/tables/dateSecession.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140816055749/http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/willis/Civil_War/tables/dateSecession.html |archive-date=August 16, 2014 |access-date=April 9, 2014 |work=[[Sewanee: The University of the South]]}}</ref> so their political influence was still far less than their percentage of the population.

About 137 Black officeholders had lived outside the South before the Civil War. Some who had escaped from slavery to the North and had become educated returned to help the South advance in the postwar era. Others were [[free people of color]] before the war, who had achieved education and positions of leadership elsewhere. Other African American men elected to office were already leaders in their communities, including a number of preachers. As happened in White communities, not all leadership depended upon wealth and literacy.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|loc=ch. 7}}{{sfnp|Foner|1993|loc=introduction}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hahn |first=Steven |title=A Nation under Our Feet |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=2005 |isbn=9780674017658 |location=Cambridge, Mass.}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin:1em auto 1em auto"
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|+Race of delegates to 1867<br />state constitutional conventions{{sfnp|Rhodes|1920|loc=v. 6: p. 199}}
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! State !! White !! Black !! % White !! Statewide White<br />population<br />(% in 1870)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1870a-03.pdf |title=Table I. Population of the United States (by States and Territories) in the Aggregate and as White, Colored, Free Colored, Slave, Chinese, and Indian, at Each Census |work=Population by States and Territories – 1790–1870 |date=1872 |publisher=[[United States Census Bureau]] |access-date=October 20, 2007 |archive-date=July 21, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721040939/http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1870a-03.pdf |url-status=live }} The complete 1870 census documents are [https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1872/dec/1870a.html available from Census.gov] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201019155659/https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1872/dec/1870a.html |date=October 19, 2020 }}.</ref>
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! scope="row" | Virginia
| style="text-align:right;"|80 || style="text-align:right;"|25 || style="text-align:right;"|76|| style="text-align:right;"|58
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
| style="text-align:right;"|107 || style="text-align:right;"|13 || style="text-align:right;"|89|| style="text-align:right;"|63
|-
! scope="row" | South Carolina
| style="text-align:right;"|48 || style="text-align:right;"|76 || style="text-align:right;"|39|| style="text-align:right;"|41
|-
! scope="row" | Georgia
| style="text-align:right;"|133 || style="text-align:right;"|33 || style="text-align:right;"|80|| style="text-align:right;"|54
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
| style="text-align:right;"|28 || style="text-align:right;"|18 || style="text-align:right;"|61|| style="text-align:right;"|51
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
| style="text-align:right;"|92 || style="text-align:right;"|16 || style="text-align:right;"|85|| style="text-align:right;"|52
|-
! scope="row" | Mississippi
| style="text-align:right;"|68 || style="text-align:right;"|17 || style="text-align:right;"|80|| style="text-align:right;"|46
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
| style="text-align:right;"|25 || style="text-align:right;"|44 || style="text-align:right;"|36|| style="text-align:right;"|50
|-
! scope="row" | Texas
| style="text-align:right;"|81 || style="text-align:right;"|9 || style="text-align:right;"|90|| style="text-align:right;"|69
|}

There were few African Americans elected or appointed to national office. African Americans voted for both White and Black candidates. The [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] guaranteed only that voting could not be restricted on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. From 1868 on, campaigns and elections were surrounded by violence as White insurgents and paramilitaries tried to suppress the Black vote, and fraud was rampant. Many white southerners who had been pro-slavery were angry with governments that had African Americans in office. Furious white Southerners told the rumor that Reconstruction was secretly promoting Black Americans having full control over whites. Many congressional elections in the South were contested. Even states with majority-African-American populations often elected only one or two African American representatives to Congress. Exceptions included South Carolina; at the end of Reconstruction, four of its five congressmen were African Americans.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/the-many-black-americans-who-held-public-office-during-reconstruction-in-southern-states-like-south-carolina.html |title=South Carolina's Forgotten Black Political Revolution |last=Foner |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Foner |date=January 31, 2018 |work=[[Slate (website)|Slate]] |access-date=February 3, 2020 |archive-date=November 4, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201104205629/https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/the-many-black-americans-who-held-public-office-during-reconstruction-in-southern-states-like-south-carolina.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin:1em auto 1em auto"
|-
|+African Americans in Office 1870–1876{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=354–355}}
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! State !! State<br />Legislators !! [[African Americans in the United States Congress#In Reconstruction era|U.S.<br />Senators]] !! [[African Americans in the United States Congress#In Reconstruction era 2|U.S.<br />Congressmen]]
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
| style="text-align:right;"|69|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|4
|-
! scope="row" | Arkansas
| style="text-align:right;"|8|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|0
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
| style="text-align:right;"|30|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|1
|-
! scope="row" | Georgia
| style="text-align:right;"|41|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|1
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
| style="text-align:right;"|87|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|[[John Willis Menard|1*]]
|-
! scope="row" | Mississippi
| style="text-align:right;"|112|| style="text-align:right;"|2 || style="text-align:right;"|1
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
| style="text-align:right;"|30|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|1
|-
! scope="row" | South Carolina
| style="text-align:right;"|190|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|6
|-
! scope="row" | Tennessee
| style="text-align:right;"|1|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|0
|-
! scope="row" | Texas
| style="text-align:right;"|19|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|0
|-
! scope="row" | Virginia
| style="text-align:right;"|46|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|0
|- style="background:#b0c4de;"
| '''Total''' || style="text-align:right;"|'''633'''|| style="text-align:right;"|'''2'''|| style="text-align:right;"|'''15'''
|-
|}