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1865–1877
The Struggle for Equal Rights Opportunities and Limits outside the South 351
In the North and West, the fight for dignified work and equal labor rights took place
in concert with a growing civil rights struggle that was part of a larger black free-
dom struggle that had begun before the war. The National Equal Rights League
continued to promote full legal and political equality, land acquisition as a basis for
economic independence, education, frugality, and moral rectitude. Local, state, and
national conventions kept the tradition of vigorous agitation alive, while petition
campaigns and lobbying kept the pressure on local and state governments and the
Republican Party to pass legislation and amendments guaranteeing black civil rights
and suffrage.
On the local level, black campaigns against segregated seating in public convey-
ances continued, many of them having been initiated by women. In Philadelphia,
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Harriet Tubman were among those who protested
their forcible ejections from streetcars. The long campaign led by Octavius Catto, a
teacher at the Institute for Colored Youth, and William Still, the best-known “agent”
on the underground railroad, finally succeeded in getting a desegregation law passed
in 1867. Three days later, when a conductor told school principal Caroline Le Count
that she could not board a streetcar, she lodged a complaint, and the conductor was
fined. Thereafter, Philadelphia’s streetcar companies abided by the new law, revers-
42
ing decades of custom. A similar protest in which Sojourner Truth played a role had
ended streetcar segregation in Washington, D.C., in 1865.
Segregated schools were the norm in the North, and as in the South, many
blacks preferred all-black schools with black teachers who took to heart the inter-
ests of black students. Catto argued for this position. He also pointed out that white
teachers assigned to black schools were likely to be those not qualified for positions
43
in white schools and, thus, “inferior.” In other communities, black fathers initiated
suits so that their children could attend white schools. Cases in Iowa in 1875 and 1876
brought court rulings in the plaintiffs’ favor, but local whites blocked their enforce-
ment. In Indiana, despite an 1869 law permitting localities to provide schools for
black children, communities with few black residents did not do so, and black chil-
dren all too often went without an education. The same situation pertained in Illinois
and California. 44
During Black Reconstruction, educational opportunities for black children may
have been more plentiful in the South than in the North, and opportunities for black
voting were better in the South, too. In 1865, black men in the North could vote with-
out restriction only in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode
Island. Together these states accounted for just 7 percent of the northern black popula-
tion. Some northern states actually took action to deny black men the vote — Minne-
sota, Kansas, and Ohio in 1867, and Michigan and New York in 1868. Most northern
whites viewed the vote as a white male prerogative. Even where blacks could vote, they
were often intimidated and subjected to violence. In 1871, Octavius Catto was mur-
dered on his way to the polls.

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