Rev. E. J. Adams “These are Revolutionary Times” March 19, 1867 America's Broken Promises

On March 2, 1867, Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's vetoes and passed a series of Reconstruction acts which would, among other things, establish new governments in the ex-Confederate states based for the first time on universal male suffrage. The first step in this process involved the electing of white and black male delegates to conventions that would write new state constitutions establishing the legal basis for these governments. Sensing this unprecedented political opportunity, African Americans gathered in mass meetings throughout the South to support Congress’s action and to plan their own agenda. One of the earliest of these meetings took place in Charleston, South Carolina on March 19, 1867. At the conclusion of the meeting Rev. E. J. Adams, a leader of the Charleston black community gave the address below. in Charleston, called for the adoption of the report pay particular attention to the last line of this speech “In Their Words My Voice” Project Uplift Literacy. Also, it was only a period of less than a decade that Black Reconstruction was allowed to survive in the former southern slave​ states. Because the Compromise of 1877 meant not only the end of Black Reconstruction but also the beginning of a period of almost 90 years that a more terror driven assault by White Americans that created an even more vicious form of oppression on the Americans of African descent throughout this nation. Why couldn’t Black Reconstruction include some form of economic reparations for our ancestors? Why are we still fighting for what is rightfully ours still 150 years later?