Reconstruction DBQ

Reconstruction DBQ The era of Reconstruction in the 1870s in both the North and South experienced battle for equality for men freed by the 13th Amendment. America was on the brink of recreating the American government, showing genuine signs of a better and brighter future for the African American population. Economic and political practices limited the liberties of black men. Vicious hate groups struck fear unto those who supported the integration of freedmen. The political realm during the time saw a regression of pro-equality emotions in both the Union and in the South. In spite of the promising hope for African Americans that surfaced in 1876, political, economic, and social aspects laced throughout the American government altered the potential for the assurance of equal rights for freedmen. The South exhibited extreme disdain for freed African-American men and women. Restrictions were placed on freedmen in order to hinder their success in a recently freed nation. These laws, often called “Black Codes”, prohibited the freedman from practicing basic rights. In Opelousas, Louisiana, black men and women were not allowed to live in town, go into town, or hold public meetings in town, and they were required to be “in the service of some white person, or former owner” (Document A). Enacted immediately after the Civil War, these laws suppressed the equal rights that freedmen were supposed to have. These laws were put into effect by state governments, and they desperately called for interference by the federal government that would not come as soon as it should have. In addition to the Black Codes, sharecropping in the south forced freedmen into an endless cycle of labor and death. This “cycle of poverty” received land, in turn for promising the landowner half the crop. At the end of the harvesting cycle, after the sharecropper has given half the crop to the landowner, the sharecropper owes more than he has earned, and the in-debt sharecropper must remain in