Failure Of Reconstruction Dbq

After the catastrophic Civil War, the Reconstruction era struggled to repair the shattered nation. In the beginning of the time period, Congress passed new amendments into the Constitution to integrate former slaves into America’s society. The 14th Amendment was one of these new additions to the Constitution, which gave equal rights to freedmen. The 15th Amendment allowed blacks to vote and express their views on politics. The Reconstruction Amendments aimed to give citizenship rights and the ability to vote but failed in providing equality to African Americans.
The 14th Amendment failed its purpose to grant freedmen rights. The amendment struggled to award former slaves citizenship rights. In 1901 the Alabama Constitution, “Declared that
citizen of any color to vote. After Reconstruction, the New South,” enacted literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate registration systems, and eventually whites-only Democratic Party primaries to exclude black voters(Document L). In addition, a poll tax receipt from Louisiana 1918 required voters to pay an expensive tax of $1.00 to vote (Document K). During the time the $1.00 tax made voting a luxury because it was an exorbitant price. This resulted in millions of blacks being unfairly rejected from the voting process which was a violation of their voting rights. Literacy tests also prevented black voting since there would be a change in difficulty based on your race. A drastic decrease in black voters was a result of these laws which countered the 15th amendment. The opposite side may claim that the poll tax applied to blacks and whites. However, the grandfather clause says that taxes and tests don’t apply to men who have had a father vote, which allowed whites to vote for free while blacks never voted before. These obstacles diminished the effect of the 15th Amendment and continuous efforts were made to cripple the rights of African