Publication and contents
The Colored Radical was the first black newspaper in the state of Kansas, published jointly in Lawrence and Leavenworth. T. W. Henderson and A. T. Williams were its editors, both of them black ministers. It was first published on August 24, 1876, in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent flight of black people out of the American South into Kansas. A subscription to the paper cost $0.50, and it was produced by the same printers as the Kansas Daily Tribune .
It was a mouthpiece for the Kansas Republican Party in the 1876 United States elections. Its reporting base was wide geographically; as far south and east as Mississippi provided it with information. It was staunchly anti-segregation, criticizing the existence of a bipartite educational system, where white and black children would attend separate schools. It called the lynching in Hamburg, South Carolina—dubbed the Hamburg massacre—one of the "darkest chapters in American society". Although it was at times critical in tone, it also provided optimistic news for black Kansans, and urged them to become self-reliant through property acquisitions and maintenance.
The last issue of the paper was published on November 16, 1876, shortly after the elections concluded. Two years following its closure, W. L. Eagleson established a black newspaper in Fort Scott, then later Topeka, called the Colored Citizen . Henderson joined Eagleson in editing that paper. [upper-alpha 1] Of the fourteen issues of the Colored Radical, only five survive.
The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history following the American Civil War, dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of abolishing slavery and reintegrating the former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. Despite this, former Confederate states often used poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation to control people of color.
The Radical Republicans were a faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They called themselves "Radicals" because of their goal of immediate, complete, and permanent eradication of slavery in the United States. They were opposed during the war by the Moderate Republicans, and by the Democratic Party. Radicals led efforts after the war to establish civil rights for former slaves and fully implement emancipation. After unsuccessful measures in 1866 resulted in violence against former slaves in the rebel states, Radicals pushed the Fourteenth Amendment for statutory protections through Congress. They opposed allowing ex-Confederate officers to retake political power in the Southern U.S., and emphasized equality, civil rights and voting rights for the "freedmen", i.e., former slaves who had been freed during or after the Civil War by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.
Benjamin Franklin "Bluff" Wade was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator for Ohio from 1851 to 1869. He is known for his leading role among the Radical Republicans. Had the 1868 impeachment of U.S. President Andrew Johnson led to a conviction in the Senate, as president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, Wade would have become president for the remaining nine months of Johnson's term.
Hiram Rhodes Revels was an American Republican politician, minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and a college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War. Elected by the Mississippi legislature to the United States Senate as a Republican to represent Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era, he was the first African American to serve in either house of the U.S. Congress.
The nadir of American race relations was the period in African-American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country, and particularly anti-black racism, was more open and pronounced than it had ever been during any other period in the nation's history. During this period, African Americans lost access to many of the civil rights which they had gained during Reconstruction. Anti-black violence, lynchings, segregation, legalized racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. Asian Americans were also not spared from such sentiments.
Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 is a history of the Reconstruction era by W. E. B. Du Bois, first published in 1935. The book challenged the standard academic view of Reconstruction at the time, the Dunning School, which contended that the period was a failure and downplayed the contributions of African Americans. Du Bois instead emphasized the agency of Black people and freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction and framed the period as one that held promise for a worker-ruled democracy to replace a slavery-based plantation economy.
This is a selected bibliography of the main scholarly books and articles of Reconstruction, the period after the American Civil War, 1863–1877.
The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
Cyrus Dicks Bell was a journalist, civil rights activist, and civic leader in Omaha, Nebraska. He owned and edited the black newspaper Afro-American Sentinel during the 1890s. He was an outspoken political independent and later in his life became a strong supporter of Democrats. He was a founding member of the state Afro-American League and frequently spoke out against lynchings and about other issues of civil rights.
John Lewis was a hotel keeper, musician, and civil rights activist in Omaha, Nebraska. He was proprietor of the Lewis House in the early days of Omaha. In 1879, he organized a brass band which was a fixture in African-American events in Omaha in the 1880s. He was active in the Nebraska State Convention of Colored Americans, a part of the Colored Conventions Movement and involved in Republican politics in Omaha.
Philip H. Murray was an abolitionist, journalist, phrenologist, and civil rights activist who spent most of his career in St. Louis, Missouri. He grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he participated in the abolitionist movement in that region. During the US Civil War he continued his work and served as a recruiting officer to help enlist blacks into the Union Army. After the war, he focused on journalism. In 1867, he established the first black newspaper in Kentucky, The Colored Kentuckian. He later moved to St. Louis where he continued to work in journalism and as an advocate for black education and civil rights. He was also the president of the first Negro Press Association.
Colored Citizen and The Colored Citizen were newspapers published for African Americans in the United States. Newspapers using the title were published in many cities including in 1867 in Vicksburg, Mississippi during the Reconstruction era, the state's first newspaper for African Americans. Many of the papers seem to have existed only briefly.
George Young Kelso was an American politician. He was delegate at Louisiana’s 1868 constitutional convention and state senator in Louisiana from 1868 to 1876. He was a “colored”, “radical” Republican.
Americus Institute was a secondary school in Americus, Georgia, United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The school was established in 1897 by the Southwestern Georgia Baptist Association in order to educate African American youth in the area. By the 1920s, the school was enrolling about 200 students annually and was considered one of the premier secondary schools for African Americans in the state. The school closed in 1932.
Luther College was a private black school in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It was established by the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America in 1903 as part of the conference's missionary work among African Americans in the Southern United States following the American Civil War. The school was founded the same year as Immanuel Lutheran College in Concord, North Carolina, and both schools had the same three departments: a secondary school, a normal school, and a seminary.
Haygood Seminary, also known as Haygood Academy, was a seminary near Washington, Arkansas, United States. It was established by the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church to train African Americans in Arkansas for a career in the clergy. It was one of the first such institutions established by the CME Church. In 1927, the school relocated to Jefferson County, Arkansas, where it operated as Arkansas-Haygood Industrial College before closing during World War II.
The Western Post was the first African American newspaper published in the U.S. state of Nebraska. It was published in the town of Hastings between 1876 and 1877. No surviving copies of the paper remain.
The Clifton Conference was a gathering of religious leaders held by William N. Hartshorn at his summer home in Clifton, Massachusetts. Five conferences are known to have been held, between 1901 and 1908.
Central Mississippi College was a segregated school for African American students established in 1893 by Baptist associations in Kosciusko, Mississippi, U.S. The school served in many capacities, including in its early history as a grammar school, a high school, and a normal school; and in later history it was a junior college.
