The Reconstruction Era: 1865 - 1880:

 

Two concerns were forefront in the minds of most of Columbia’s residents during Reconstruction: the economy, and what to do with the introduction of thousands of new citizens into the social order (Moore 1993). While rigid control of the lives of African Americans by White Southerners came to a halt with emancipation in 1865, the subjugation of African Americans by White rule continued in more subtle forms. Most White Columbians assumed that they, the minority, would continue to set policy and control the majority. “We can control and direct the Negroes,” wrote South Carolina planter Wade Hampton in 1867 of the African American vote, “if we act discreetly, and in my judgment the highest duty of every Southern man is to secure the good will and confidence of the Negro. Our future depends on this” (in Moore 1993:219).

Hampton’s efforts to control the African American vote failed, despite South Carolina’s attempt to deny African American suffrage in its first post-war constitution. One-hundred and twenty-four delegates (67 African American) wrote a new state constitution in January, 1867, granting suffrage rights to African Americans. Resistance on the part of White South Carolinians prompted the U.S. Congress to abolish South Carolina’s state government in March of 1867, setting the stage for African Americans to fully exercise their political rights for the first time. But resistance, on the part of the White majority, to African American political participation continued, thus forcing military authorities to remove the mayor and five aldermen. These authorities installed six people of their choosing; of which three were African Americans (Moore 1993).

By April 1870, African Americans succeeded in holding the majority of all Richland County and Columbia city offices. However, mayor, sheriff, and any position related to finances remained in White hands throughout Reconstruction (Moore 1993). But political involvement was not the only way to gain social empowerment. In 1881, a public school board was organized; although “the [White] people had little interest in education … the poor [White] people were too proud to accept what they regarded as the charity of the state” (Crow 1936:119). The total attendance for the two years preceding the creation of the school board was roughly 500 students, of whom the majority were African Americans (Crow 1936).

Historian James Moore (1993) suggests that the Columbia community had a relatively easier time adjusting to these new social conditions than the rest of South Carolina for two reasons. First, compared to many communities in South Carolina, Columbia always had a relatively large free African American population; and second, Columbians put economics before politics. Regardless of how South Carolina’s Whites may have felt about the African American vote and political power, one’s day-to-day economic conditions – how one is to make a living – received considerable attention. The Freedmen’s Bureau reported in October of 1886 that 10,304 individuals in Richland county were destitute, nearly half of the county’s population (Moore 1993). During Reconstruction, rural economies continued to decline. Although the number of small farms increased, largely as the result of splitting large plantations, the majority of farms were based on the sharecropping system, perpetuating an already destitute population. Out-of-state migration soared, and by 1870, the population of Columbia was just 9,298, an increase of only 1,200 people over a ten year period (Moore 1993).

An African American political majority in Columbia ended abruptly in 1877 when Democrats succeeded in ousting Republicans from city and county governments. With African American political disempowerment and a new hands-off attitude by U. S. Congress toward the restructuring of the South, Reconstruction came to an abrupt end. African Americans were increasingly forced to use alternative means to obtain social empowerment in this post-Reconstruction environment that actively sought to deny African Americans the full privileges of citizenship. African Americans and other marginalized groups took advantage of an emerging mass market and consumer culture to achieve their social objectives.

-Jakob D. Crockett