January 1868

In the 1868 elections enabled by Reconstruction Acts, over 150 Black men were elected to Southern state legislatures. South Carolina's legislature became majority Black. These men — many formerly enslaved — passed public education laws, civil rights statutes, and infrastructure investments. They served alongside white Republicans to create the South's first public school systems. Their governance was systematically distorted by the later "Redemption" narrative as corrupt incompetence.

South Carolina's Reconstruction constitutional convention opened January 14, 1868 with 76 Black delegates among 124 total — the only majority-Black constitutional convention in American history. Delegates included formerly enslaved men and free Black professionals. The resulting constitution established public schools, abolished property qualifications for voting, and reformed the penal system.

Black newspapers grew from ~10 in 1865 to over 30 by 1875, including the New Orleans Tribune (1864), first daily Black newspaper, and Frederick Douglass's New National Era (Washington DC, 1870–74). These papers reported Klan violence, advocated civil rights, and built national Black political consciousness.

During Reconstruction, over a dozen Black colleges and normal schools were founded — including Atlanta University (1865), Morehouse (1867), Hampton Institute (1868), and Talladega College (1867). These institutions trained the teachers who staffed freedpeople's schools. By 1875 Hampton had produced hundreds of Black teachers who spread across the South, multiplying the reach of Black education.

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was founded in Hampton, Virginia in 1868 by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong to train Black teachers. Its industrial education model became highly influential; among its graduates was Booker T. Washington, who used Hampton as the template for Tuskegee Institute.

Elizabeth Keckley, who had purchased her own and her son's freedom, became Mary Todd Lincoln's personal dressmaker and confidante in the White House, and in 1868 published her memoir Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. The book was an extraordinary account of life at the highest levels of American power from the perspective of a Black woman, and remains an invaluable historical document.

Elizabeth Keckley, who had purchased her own and her son's freedom, became Mary Todd Lincoln's personal dressmaker and confidante in the White House, and in 1868 published her memoir Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. The book was an extraordinary account of life at the highest levels of American power from the perspective of a Black woman, and remains an invaluable historical document.