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Mumbai, India — The government of India has proposed raising the smoking age from 18 to 21, banning the sale of loose cigarettes, and doing away with designated smoking areas in public places. The proposal [...]
A November 26 letter from the presidency asked the head of Uganda's national drug authority to 'work out a mechanism' to clear the importation of the vaccines.
China has about five COVID-19 vaccine candidates at different levels of trials. It was not clear what vaccine was being imported into Uganda.
One of the frontrunners is the Sinopharm vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Product, a unit of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates said the vaccine has 86% efficacy, citing an interim analysis of late-stage clinical trials.
China has used the drug to vaccinate up to a million people under its emergency use program.
On Tuesday, Morocco said it was ordering up to 10 million doses of the vaccine.
Record cases
Uganda on Monday registered 701 new COVID-19 cases, the highest-ever daily increase, bringing its national count to 23,200.
The new cases were out of the 5,578 samples tested for the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, the country's health ministry said in a statement.
Tuesday's tally was 606, the second-highest ever number of new infections, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the east African country to 23,860.
Health authorities have blamed ongoing election campaigns which have drawn huge crowds for the rise in infections.
Smoking cessation could be a path to fewer strokes, researchers say
African Americans who smoke are nearly 2.5 times more likely to have a stroke than those who never smoked, while former smokers show a similarly lower risk as never smokers, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The findings from the Jackson Heart Study suggests that even after years of smoking, African Americans—who as a group are twice as likely as whites to have a stroke and die from it—could significantly reduce their risk if they kicked the habit.
“This study provides further strong evidence of the link between cigarette smoking and stroke in African Americans,” said David Goff, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at NHLBI.
He noted that while smoking has been shown in major studies to raise the risk of stroke 1.5 times for the general population, “these adverse health effects seem to be magnified in African Americans.”
Study: Cigarette Smoking and Incident Stroke in African Americans of the Jackson Heart Study.
The Ministry of Health this afternoon confirmed the deaths of two senior citizens who tested positive for COVID-19, taking the total number of deaths from the pandemic in Guyana to 166.
The article Senior men, 70 and 85, die of COVID-19 appeared first on Stabroek News.
Seven out of 10 African American youth between ages 12 and 17 who smoke use menthol cigarettes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And, a higher percentage (93 percent) of Black adults who smoke began using menthol cigarettes. That’s more than two times higher than the number of White adults (44 []
The post Black Groups Drag FDA Into Lawsuit Over Newport, Kool Other Menthol Cigs appeared first on Black Voice News.
Shoeless Joe Jackson , byname of Joseph Jefferson Jackson (born July 16, 1888, Greenville, S.C., U.S.—died Dec. 5, 1951, Greenville), American professional baseball player, by many accounts one of the greatest, who was ultimately banned from the game because of his involvement in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal.
Born into extreme poverty, Jackson began work in a cotton mill when he was barely six and never went to school. He survived a sickly childhood caused by the lint-filled air in the mill, then grew tall and gangly, with exceptionally long, strong arms. At age 13 he was an extraordinary ballplayer, the youngest ever to play on a mill team. He acquired his nickname when nursing blistered feet from a new pair of spikes (baseball shoes). Playing without them, he hit a base-clearing triple that provoked an opposing fan to cry out, “You shoeless bastard, you!” Even his bat became part of his growing legend—Black Betsy, a locally hewn piece of hickory 36 inches (91 cm) long, weighing 48 ounces (1.4 kg), 12 ounces (340 grams) heavier than modern bats, and stained by countless splatters of tobacco juice.
In 1908 Connie Mack, owner of the Philadelphia Athletics (A’s), bought Jackson’s contract with the Greenville Spinners for $325, but the 19-year-old Shoeless Joe, homesick for his 15-year-old wife, Katie, and embarrassed by his hayseed illiteracy, got off the train at Richmond, Virginia, to catch the first train back to Greenville.
The following season Mack sent Jackson to Savannah, Georgia, where he hit a league-leading .358. When recalled to the A’s in Philadelphia, he was humiliated by the relentless hazing of veteran teammates. Mack offered to hire a tutor to teach him to read and write, but Shoeless Joe wanted none of it. In 1910 he was traded to the Cleveland Naps (later the Indians), where he hit an astonishing .407 in his first full season as a big league player. He liked the city, developing a taste for fine food and nice clothes. In an amusing irony, he loved expensive shoes. Fans liked his pleasant,
revolt
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly from Africa to the Americas, and then their sale there. The slave trade used mainly the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were Africans from central and western Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders (with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), who brought them to the Americas.[1] The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires.[2]
The Portuguese were the first to engage in the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, and other European countries soon followed.[3] Shipowners regarded the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible,[2] there to be sold to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar and cotton plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, cutting timber for ships, in skilled labour, and as domestic servants. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants, like workers coming from England, and also as apprentices for life. By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with the slaves and their offspring being legally the property of their owners, and children born to slave mothers were also slaves. As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were sold at markets with other goods and services.
The major
Ignatius Sancho was an African composer and author who grew up as a house slave in England. We do not know how Sancho left domestic servitude but according to historians by the time he was an adult he was an emancipated employee of the Duke and Duchess of Montagu. There, working as a butler, he flourished, reading voraciously, writing prose, poetry, and music.
Sancho married Anne Osborne, a West Indian woman of African descent, in 1758. They had six children. The Duke and Duchess of Montagu provided Sancho money which enabled him to leave domestic service and buy a grocery shop in Westminster in 1773. By the early 1770s Sancho had transformed himself from a house servant to a man of refinement and accomplishment, penning letters to friends and sympathizers around the country. In 1768, the British painter Thomas Gainsborough painted his portrait.
Sancho sold sugar, tea, and tobacco among other staples from his store. Many customers came to his store for his advice and company as well. One was Charles James Fox, for whom Sancho voted in the 1780 election. With that vote Sancho became the first known black person to cast a ballot in Great Britain. Two years later Fox became Britain’s first Foreign Secretary.
Ignatius Sancho is best known for his letters about slavery. He sent missives to leading novelists describing himself as a black person and a former slave. He then urged the novelists to use the writings to condemn slavery in the British West Indies. Besides his political involvement, Sancho, an amateur composer, published his own music. His surviving pieces consists of one set of songs and three sets of dances, all published over roughly a twelve-year period between 1767 and 1779. They total 62 short compositions. Ignatius Sancho died in London in 1780.
Black Market and Black money redirect here. Market socialist
State capitalist
A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or transaction that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal. Parties engaging in the production or distribution of prohibited goods and services are members of the illegal economy. Examples include the drug trade, prostitution (where prohibited), illegal currency transactions and human trafficking. Violations of the tax code involving income tax evasion constitutes membership in the unreported economy.[1] [2]
Because tax evasion or participation in a black market activity is illegal, participants will attempt to hide their behavior from the government or regulatory authority.[3] Cash usage is the preferred medium of exchange in illegal transactions since cash usage does not leave a footprint.[4] Common motives for operating in black markets are to trade contraband, avoid taxes and regulations, or skirt price controls or rationing. Typically the totality of such activity is referred to with the definite article as a complement to the official economies, by market for such goods and services, e.g. the black market in bush meat.
The black market is distinct from the grey market, in which commodities are distributed through channels that, while legal, are unofficial, unauthorized, or unintended by the original manufacturer, and the white market.
Black money is the proceeds of an illegal transaction, on which income and other taxes have not been paid, and which can only be legitimised by some form of money laundering. Because of the clandestine nature of the black economy it is not
Nat Love, also known as Deadwood Dick, was an African-American cowboy after the American Civil War.
In 1907, Love wrote his autobiography, Life and Adventures of Nat Love.
In Dodge City, he joined the cowboys from the Duval Ranch, located in Texas.
Because of his excellent horse riding skills, the Duval Ranch cowboys gave Love the nickname, “Red River Dick.”
Nat Love, Inc. introduced hot pants to the United States at the first National Boutique Show, which was held at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City.
Fita has been handed a boost in its legal bid against the cigarette ban, with the Supreme Court granting it leave to appeal the high court decision.
The role of African Americans in the agricultural history of the United States was extremely important, and given that the majority of blacks were employed in agriculture in the United States particularly during the 19th and early 20th century, represents a major part of their history and the economic progress of the nation.
Plantation owners brought mass supplies of slaves from Africa and the Caribbean and Mexico to farm the fields during cotton harvests.[1] Black women and children were also enslaved in the industry.[2] The growth of Slavery in the United States is closely tied to the expansion of plantation agriculture.
Cotton farming became a major area of racial conflict in the history of the United States, particularly during the nineteenth century. Southern black cotton farmers faced discrimination from the north, and many white Democrats were concerned about how many of them were being employed in the US cotton industry and the dramatic growth of black landowners.[3] [4] They urged white farmers in the south to take control of the industry, which from time to time resulted in strikes by black cotton pickers; for instance blacks led by the Colored Farmers Association (CFA) strikers from Memphis organized a strike in Lee County in 1891, which resulted in much violence.[2] Black cotton farmers were very important to entrepreneurs which emerged during industrialization in the United States, particularly Henry Ford.[5] The United States Emancipation Proclamation came into power on January 1, 1863, allowing a new journey for people of African ancestry to participate in the U.S. Agriculture Industry in a new way.[6]
The conditions for black cotton farmers gradually improved during the twentieth century. Ralph J. Bunche, an expert in Negro suffrage in the United States, observed in 1940 that many thousands of black cotton farmers each year now go to the polls, stand in line with their white neighbors, and mark their ballots independently without protest or intimidation, in order to determine government
[allAfrica] On November 4th, 2020, the United-Kingdom based public health organization Knowledge Action Change, which aims at promoting health through the concept of harm reduction, issued an expert report entitled: Burning Issues: The Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction. In parallel, the organisation hosted two discussion sessions about the state of tobacco harm reduction in the world.
Thirty-four new COVID-19 cases were recorded on Friday.
According to the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard, the 34 new cases increased Guyana’s total number of positive confirmed cases to 6,076.
The article 34 more COVID-19 cases recorded appeared first on Stabroek News.
THE forex auction system which started to operate on Tuesday this week is not meant to benefit the poor small-scale tobacco farmers.
Most of the small-scale tobacco farmers in communal areas have already sold more than 80% of their tobacco, for they cannot hold onto it for long due to pressure from contracting companies and the need to pay labour, buy food and other necessities as tobacco farming is their only source of income.
Many can celebrate the reviewed exchange rate, but this will not change our situation as tobacco farmers as basic commodities and farming inputs continue to be charged using the parallel market exchange rate which is trading at US$1:$100.
The forex auction rate will always be below the parallel market rate, culminating in the continued suffering of tobacco farmers.
Most farmers in communal areas depend on tobacco farming as a source of income and they are disappointed by the payment system which was used this season.
George Washington Carver was born in 1860 in Diamond Grove, Missouri and despite early difficulties would rise to become one of the most celebrated and respected scientists in United States history. His important discoveries and methods enabled farmers through the south and midwest to become profitable and prosperous.
George was born the sickly child of two slaves and would remain frail for most of his childhood. One night a band of raiders attacked his family and stole George and his mother. Days later, George was found unharmed by neighbors and was traded back to his owners in exchange for a racehorse. Because of his frailty, George was not suited for work in the fields but he did possess a great interest in plants and was very eager to learn more about them.
His master sent him to Neosho, Missouri for an early education and graduated from Minneapolis High School in Kansas. He eventually mailed an application to Highland University in Kansas and was not only accepted but also offered a scholarship. Happily, George traveled to the school to accept the scholarship but upon meeting George, the University president asked “why didn’t you tell me you were a Negro?” and promptly withdrew the scholarship and the acceptance.
In 1887 Carver was accepted into Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa where he became well respected for his artistic talent (in later days his art would be included in the spectacular World’s Columbian Exposition Art Exhibit.) Carver’s interests, however, lay more in science and he transferred from Simpson to Iowa Agricultural College (which is now known as Iowa State University.) He distinguished himself so much that upon graduation he was offered a position on the school’s faculty, the first Black accorded the honor. Carver was allowed great freedom in working in agriculture and botany in the University’s greenhouses. In 1895, Carver co-authored a series of papers on the prevention and cures for fungus
[Nation] A spike in coronavirus infections has cast doubt on the anticipated full reopening of schools on Monday, with representatives of teachers and parents now urging caution.
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William Henry Crogman, a native of the West Indian island of St. Martin, was educated at Pierce Academy in Massachusetts immediately after the Civil War. In 1868 he was named to the English faculty of newly organized Claflin College in South Carolina. By 1870 Crogman returned to college, entering Atlanta University. He graduated first in his class in 1876 and was appointed professor of classics at Clark College, another black institution in the city. Crogman was appointed president of Clark in 1903.
On July 16, 1884, Crogman was invited to address the predominantly white National Educational Association convention in Madison, Wisconsin. He used the opportunity to describe the remarkable post-Civil War educational progress of African Americans which he credited mainly to the faculty of the numerous black colleges which emerged throughout the South after 1865 and the dedication of the students and their parents to educational achievement despite their operating in a daunting environment of poverty and racial violence. Crogman’s speech appears below.
I appreciate most heartily the invitation extended to me to speak before you to night with regard to the educational interests of my people in the South. Nor can I well suppress within me the feeling that this act of courtesy on your part was prompted by a generous consideration for a race long obscured, but now hopefully struggling into light under the benign influences of Christian liberty. Surely, too, it will be a little encouraging to that race to think that, notwithstanding all the discouragements of the past, notwithstanding all the embarrassments, not withstanding all the misgivings and speculations with regard to its intellectual and moral capacity, it has, nevertheless, within twenty short years of freedom, been found worthy of recognition by you, and given to day several representatives among the educators of this great nation. Verily the world has been moving, and we have been moving in it.
But whatever may have been the advancement of the race
Carter G. Woodson is known as the father of black history. He worked tirelessly to establish the field of African-American history in the early 1900s. Born on Dec. 19, 1875, Woodson was the son of two former slaves who had nine children; he was the seventh. He rose from these modest origins to become a respected historian.
Woodsons parents owned a 10-acre tobacco farm near the James River in Virginia, and their children had to spend most of their days doing farm work to help the family survive.
This wasnt an unusual situation for farm families in late 19th-century America, but it did mean that young Woodson had little time to pursue his studies.
Two of his uncles ran a schoolroom that met five months out of the year, and Woodson attended when he could. He learned to read using the Bible and his fathers newspapers in the evening. As a teenager, he went to work in the coal mines. During his free time, Woodson continued his education on his own, reading the writings of Roman philosopher Cicero and the Roman poet Virgil.
When he was 20 years old, Woodson enrolled at Frederick Douglass High School in West Virginia, where his family then lived. He graduated in a year and went on to Berea College in Kentucky and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. While he was still in college, he became an educator, teaching high school and serving as principal.
After his college graduation in 1903, Woodson spent time teaching in the Philippines and also traveled, visiting the Middle East and Europe.
When he returned to the states, he enrolled at the University of Chicago and received both his bachelors and masters degrees in the spring of 1908. That fall, he became a doctoral student in history at Harvard University.
Woodson was not the first African-American to earn a Ph.D.
in history from Harvard; that distinction went to W.E.B. Du Bois. But when Woodson graduated in 1912, he embarked on the project of making the history of African-Americans both visible and respected. Mainstream historians were white and tended towards
The number of positive Covid-19 cases rose to 21 343 on Saturday evening, with 10 more deaths being reported, according to Health Minister Zweli Mkhize.
This brings the number of deaths to 407, with 10 104 recoveries.
The number of tests conducted has risen to 564 370, with 21 338 being done in the last 24 hours.
ALSO READ | Lockdown: Dlamini-Zuma pushes for tobacco, alcohol ban to continue until Level 1
\"We wish to express our condolences to the loved ones of the departed and thank the healthcare workers who cared for the deceased,\" Mkhize said.
The findings from the Jackson Heart Study suggests that even after years of smoking, African Americans — who as a group are twice as likely as whites to have a stroke and die from it — could significantly reduce their risk if they kicked the habit.
The study’s findings, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), both part of NIH, will appear online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The Jackson Heart Study is supported and conducted in collaboration with Jackson State University (HHSN268201800013I), Tougaloo College (HHSN268201800014I), the Mississippi State Department of Health and the University of Mississippi Medical Center (HHSN268201800010I, HHSN268201800011I, and HHSN268201800012I) contracts from NHLBI and NIMHD.
Current government officials
Language: English
Ethnicity/race: predominantly black; some British, Portuguese, and Lebanese
Religions: Anglican, other Protestant, Roman Catholic
Literacy rate: 97.8% (2003 est.)
Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2013 est.): $952 million; per capita $16,300. Real growth rate: 1.9%. Inflation: 2.2%. Unemployment: 4.5% (1997). Arable land: 19.23%. Agriculture: sugarcane, rice, yams, vegetables, bananas; fish. Labor force: 18,170 (June 1995). Industries: tourism, cotton, salt, copra, clothing, footwear, beverages. Natural resources: arable land. Exports: $57.3 million (2013 est.): machinery, food, electronics, beverages, tobacco. Imports: $355.4 million (2013 est.): machinery, manufactures, food, fuels. Major trading partners: U.S., Canada, Bangladesh, Italy, Germany, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago (2012).
Communications: Telephones: main lines in use: 20,000 (2012); mobile cellular: 84,000 (2012). Radio broadcast stations: 15 (2007). Radios: 28,000 (1997). Television broadcast stations: 2 (plus 3 repeaters) (2003). Televisions: 10,000 (1997). Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 54 (2012). Internet users: 17,000 (2009).
Transportation: Railways: total: 50 km (2008). Highways: total: 383 km; paved: 163 km; unpaved: 220 km (2006 est.). Ports and harbors: Basseterre, Charlestown. Airports: 2 (2013).
International disputes: Joins other Caribbean states to counter Venezuelas claim that Aves Island sustains human habitation, a criterion under United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which permits Venezuela to extend its Economic Exclusion Zone/continental shelf over a large portion of the eastern Caribbean Sea.
Major sources and definitions
Events leading to
Uncle Toms Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly,[1] [2] is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War, according to Will Kaufman.[3]
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.[4] [5] [6]
Uncle Toms Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.[7] [8] It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.[9] In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies in Great Britain.[10] In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called the most popular novel of our day.[11] The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, So this is the little lady who started this great war.[12] The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896, and it has been argued that The long-term durability of Lincolns greeting as an anecdote in literary studies and Stowe scholarship can perhaps be explained in part by the desire among many contemporary intellectuals ... to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change.[13]
The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people.[14] These include the affectionate, dark-skinned mammy; the pickaninny stereotype of black children; and the Uncle Tom, or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his
Ebrahim Patel
Based on level-3 regulations leaked over the weekend ahead of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement on Sunday evening that the whole of South Africa will move from level-4 to level-3 lockdown on 1 June, government has done a complete about-turn on how it will ease lockdown restrictions.
Not allowed
Original draft regulations for public comment were absurdly detailed, likely as a result of tons of “consultation” with the likes of minister of trade, industry competition Ebrahim Patel.
These completely arbitrary distinctions in the lockdown regulations reached their nadir in the spat over the sale of “hot, cooked food” (implemented after-the-fact with a one-line amendment) and Patel’s now-infamous Kafkaesque numbered list of what items of clothing are allowed to be sold under level 4.
So, then, to the list …
The only “specific economic exclusions” in the draft regulations for level 3 are restaurants, pubs and shebeens, travel for recreational purposes, and possibly certain personal care services (in what is a confusingly constructed regulation).
Compare these draft regulations to the original “framework for sectors” published for comment and it is clear that these are level 3 in name only; we’ve all but skipped right to level 2.
However, if it was necessary, Ramaphosa said any part of the country could return to alert Levels 4 or 5 if the spread of infection was not contained and if there was a risk of health facilities being overwhelmed.
The most effective defence against the virus is the simplest
Ramaphosa said simple hygiene practices, such as the regular washing of hands, wearing a face mask, keeping at least a 1.5 metre distance from other people, avoiding touching the face with unwashed hands, and cleaning surfaces regularly were the most effective defences against the coronavirus.
South Africa now has 11 000 active Covid-19 patients, and 429 deaths
The country now has 22 583 confirmed coronavirus cases, of which 11 000 are active cases, Ramaphosa said.
South Africa has repurposed 20 000 hospital beds for Covid-19, and 27 hospitals are being built
In preparation for the expected increase in infections, around 20 000 hospital beds have been, and are being, repurposed for Covid-19 cases, Ramaphosa said.
Owing to the great demand across the world, South Africa has a shortage of diagnostic medical supplies, which has contributed to lengthy turnaround times for coronavirus testing, Ramaphosa said.
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Russia's state arms seller Rosoboronexport announced in April the first contract to supply assault boats to a country in sub-Saharan Africa.
While this news might not have caught much international attention, this new deal adds up to a pattern: Russia is building its path to gain a foothold in Africa and broaden its export map for arms on the continent.
Russia's eye on Africa
Until now, Algeria remains the biggest recipient of Russian arms in Africa, followed by Egypt, Sudan and Angola.
In the new millennium, Russia was a predictable choice for Angola to sign new arms deals -- and within the last five years, Angola has become the third-biggest African client for Russian arms after Algeria and Egypt.
Soviet-era connections allowed Russia to secure its monopoly on arms deals, and Moscow completely wrote off Algeria's $5.7 billion in debt in 2006.
The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1865–1896) refers to the post-Civil War reform movements in the United States aimed at eliminating racial discrimination against African Americans, improving educational and employment opportunities, and establishing electoral power. This period between 1865 and 1895 saw tremendous change in the fortunes of the black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
The year 1865 held two important events in the history of African Americans: the Thirteenth Amendment, which eliminated slavery, was ratified; and Union troops arrived in June in Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, giving birth to the modern Juneteenth celebrations. Freedmen looked to start new lives as the country recovered from the devastation of the Civil War.
Immediately following the Civil War, the federal government began a program known as Reconstruction aimed at rebuilding the states of the former Confederacy. The federal programs also provided aid to the former slaves and attempted to integrate them as citizens into society. During and after this period, blacks made substantial gains in their political power and many were able to move from abject poverty to land ownership. At the same time resentment by many whites toward these gains resulted in unprecedented violence led by the local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, and later in the 1870s by such paramilitary groups as the Red Shirts and White League.
In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson, a landmark upholding separate but equal racial segregation as constitutional. It was a devastating setback for civil rights, as the legal, social, and political status of the black population reached a nadir. From 1890 to 1908, beginning with Mississippi, southern states passed new constitutions and laws disenfranchising most blacks and excluding them from the political system, a status that was maintained in many cases into the 1960s.
Much of the early reform movement during this era was spearheaded by the Radical
