African Americans After Reconstruction

After the American Civil War more than just a divided nation needed to be reunited. The states of the Confederacy had been broken. The destruction of their economy was total. From the insolvency of their currency, to the decimation of so much of the white male population to the sudden loss of billions of dollars of property in the form of freedom for nearly 4 million African slaves. What is more is the ex-slaves faced what seemed like insurmountable odds in trying to find loved ones and make a start in a prostate region without any real economic means or many skills that would assist them in this effort. The Southern white population would surely fight them at every step, so any improvement beyond their sudden freedom would depend largely on the benevolence of Northern lawmakers and charitable acts from liberal whites from Northern states heading south to assist them in this massive undertaking. The results of these efforts are mixed and in the end had no lasting impact, but the period of Reconstruction showed promise, but in the end failed due to a lack of political will and interest in the plight of the former slave in the South. It was understood by all that the passage of the 13th Amendment was an inevitable outcome of the Civil War. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had already freed slaves in the
Blacks did manage to remove themselves from the control of white churches and establish their own places of worship. These would become vital to Black communities throughout the South and would later serve to promote efforts to challenge segregation many years later. The educational systems established, though segregated and severely underfunded, did provide the beginnings of efforts to educate Black children. This was important for a group that had been denied literacy as a part of law during