Race after the Civil War

• In the decades following the Civil War, African Americans struggled to exercise their newly acquired civil rights and obligations. Immediately following the war, these "new" United States citizens asserted their civil rights, participating eagerly in government. Their early gains quickly evaporated in the toxic political climate of Southern Reconstruction. By the end of the 1870s, southern whites had effectively proscribed most blacks from voting or participating in state and local government (the law denied the vote to women of any race).
• Economic opportunities remained limited for most African Americans in the decades following the Civil War. Racism, economic downturns and agricultural crises combined to encourage hundreds of thousands of southern blacks to migrate north in search of a better life. Within a single generation, a distinctly urban lifestyle and culture developed.
• Religion was an especially powerful and unifying force. Like the churches of newly arrived European immigrants, African American churches offered their members far more than a place to worship. Churches promoted cultural solidarity and provided spiritual and community support.
• Even in the North, however, African Americans did not enjoy the same social and economic mobility experienced by millions of European immigrants arriving in the same period. Employers preferred to hire native-born whites and immigrants for higher paying industrial jobs. Many believed that blacks were farmers by nature and were thus ill suited to industrial employment. To make matters worse, most trade unions excluded African Americans, effectively shutting them out of the labor movement. These economic and social conditions limited employment opportunities for black men to the most taxing, dangerous and menial positions. Opportunities for black women were still more restricted, confined mainly to domestic service in white households.
• In the year 1890, the percentage of black women who were gainfully employed more than doubled that of white women. This trend remained up until 1940.
• Interracial relationships did happen but were rare.
• In the 1880s, out of 3,808,334 recorded unions in the U.S. in which the husband was between the ages of 20-40, 3,932 were interracial. That’s barely over 0.1%.

Information from University of Massachusetts.