Reconstruction and Its Unmaking

For a brief, remarkable period after the Civil War, South Carolina became something new. The Reconstruction constitution of eighteen sixty-eight was written by a convention in which Black delegates held a majority, the only time in American history that a state constitutional convention was controlled by Black representatives. The document they produced established free public education in South Carolina for the first time.

It guaranteed equal civil rights regardless of race. It created a more democratic structure of government than the state had ever known. Black South Carolinians voted, held office, and served in the legislature in numbers that reflected the state's majority-Black population.

Joseph Rainey of Georgetown became the first Black man to serve in the United States House of Representatives in eighteen seventy. Alonzo Ransier served as lieutenant governor. Robert Brown Elliott, a Black congressman representing South Carolina's third district, gave a speech on the floor of the House in eighteen seventy-four defending the Civil Rights Act that Northern newspapers printed in full.

The violence that ended this period was deliberate and organized. White rifle clubs and paramilitary groups, the Red Shirts, organized under the leadership of former Confederate general Martin Gary, systematically intimidated Black voters and their white Republican allies across the state throughout eighteen seventy-six. Polling places were occupied by armed men.

Political meetings were broken up. Black voters were turned away. The election of eighteen seventy-six ended Reconstruction in South Carolina.

The federal government withdrew its troops in April eighteen seventy-seven. Within years, the constitutional gains of the Reconstruction era were dismantled one by one. The free public schools survived, though underfunded and segregated for nearly a century.

Almost everything else was gone.