Main Points
- The population of the District grew by 80% during the Civil War.
- The creation of schools for Black children was the most important lasting change made by Reconstruction
- The last two decades of the 19th century brought development to the District, and Black residents experienced more discrimination and segregation as white people bought new homes
Change and the Freedmen’s Bureau
The District saw changes after the war. Many Union soldiers passed through the District, and by the end of the war the District’s population had grown by 80%. Black people represented 30% of the District’s residents. The population of rural Washington County grew even faster than the city. The Harris family saw new arrivals in the area near their Dry Meadows property, but it was Reconstruction that brought lasting important change to the area.1
The creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau made essential differences in the lives of Black residents. The District became the first place in the country where freedmen could vote, and Black residents voted for the first time in a municipal election in 1867. Within a year several Black men were elected to offices in the District government. The establishment of schools for Black children had an especially important long-lasting impact. The construction of schools was slow, but fortunately a small school building appeared near the Harris property, and the two youngest children, Lorenzo and Mary, became the first of the family to have a formal education.2
Finding Work Opportunities
The two veteran Harris brothers returned home from the war quite changed from their experience and they did not remain long with the family because they needed to look for work. John returned to Georgetown to join his wife and little son and found work as a laborer; his brother Joseph, now literate from an education effort in his regiment, went to New York, eventually finding work as a railroad porter. The third youngest brother had spent the war on the farm but by the time the war ended he was old enough to leave home. Eventually he settled in Georgetown, working as a driver in the busy port. The youngest son of the family attended the Reconstruction schools near the farm and then joined his brothers in Georgetown. He eventually found work as a sexton in a local church which led to a promotion and new job in a Buffalo, NY cathedral. The men had an advantage over the many formerly enslaved job seekers, as they had grown up in a free family on a farm in a stable environment.3
The Panic of 1873, an economic crisis that resulted in a depression that lasted some five years, causing hardship for many of the District residents, but the Harris family were spared the worst as they owned their land and could raise their own food. At that time their daughter Mary was still living at home with her parents
Few work opportunities were available to Black women. The Harrises’ daughter Mary finished the few years of education offered by the local school and she remained at the Dry Meadows farm, helping her parents. In 1877 she married a cobbler and they settled on the family property. Free Black people commonly shared a home with family or friends and the Dry Meadows property accommodated the new family which grew over the years.4
Development and Change
By the 1880s white residents of city had found their way out to the rural areas of Washington County and began to purchase land, and land values increased. The advent of electric streetcars brought even more people, which also brought some of the problems that had existed in the city. Black residents began experiencing more discrimination and disenfranchisement. Civil rights laws were enacted during Reconstruction, but they were generally ignored, and Black people found that they rarely interacted with white people and those relationships eroded. As development grew, often Black renters were pushed out of central areas.5
Meanwhile, Harris farm continued to be a haven for family members, especially in hard financial times such as the depression that followed the economic Panic of 1873. The family was in a good state, but their life would change in 1891 when Thomas Harris died. It left a gap in the family, and his death was followed two years later by that of the eldest Harris son, John. After these deaths Joseph Harris left New York to live at the farm and help his mother.6
Did you know…?
- Two years after the Civil War Black men in the District gained the right to vote and in 1868 several Black men were elected to serve in the local government.
- Washington D. C. became the headquarters of the Freedman’s Bureau and therefore a model for many of the changes made by reconstruction.
- Schools for Black children were one of the most important changes the reconstruction made.
Questions for Students
- What was the most important long-lasting change made by the Freedmen’s Bureau?
- Why did Black residents of the District experience more racial discrimination in the 1880s?
- Why did the Harris daughter not seek work after her schooling?
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Endnotes
- Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, Between Freedom and Equality, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021, pp. 93-94
- Torrey and Green, 95-97
- Torrey and Green, 100-101
- Torrey and Green, 103-104
- Torrey and Green, 104-105
- Torrey and Green, 105
Other Sources
- Asch, Chris Myers and George Derek Musgrove. Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017
- Costa Dora L., and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008
- Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2014
- Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. 8th ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009
- Green, Constance McLaughlin. The Secret City, A History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967