I am always confused as to how no one sees this President as having done more for Black people and Civil Rights than any President in American History.
HIs strong record helping African Americans and implementing Civil Rights began even before he was President.
In fact Lyndon Johnson's passage of the Civil Right Act was nothing more than the completion of what began under this President during the Reconstruction Era 80 years earlier. I am completely surprised that President Grant is not more well known among African Americans. He oversaw the Reconstruction era in the USA, which was the time that African Americans had rapid advancement in the USA and it was the only time before the modern era that African Americans had so many elective offices, including in the South. He oversaw the passage of the 15th Amendment. He created the U.S. Justice Department for purposes of overseeing the Civil Rights of African Americans. He crushed the KKK. On and on and on. Grant is by far the president that did the most for Black people.
Hell even as a General he used African American troops to fight against the Confederates, when other Generals were against it. That is how the United States Colored Troops (USCTs) came to fight in the Civil War beginning as far back as 1863.
This guy was amazing. His parents were abolitionists. He ended up getting married to a woman that owned slaves. He freed the slave that she gave him, even though he was probably broker than the slave that he ended up freeing.
Ulysses S. Grant
Justice Department is created, June 23, 1870
Ulysses S. Grant & the 15th Amendment (U.S. National Park Service)
Grant signs KKK Act into law, April 20, 1871
Grant, Reconstruction and the KKK | American Experience | PBS
March 1, 1875: Grant signs the Civil Rights Act
