Black men began to organize politically, and after 1870, to exercise the right to vote, even in the face of intense and frequently violent opposition from southern whites.įree public school systems emerged across the South during Reconstruction, and constitutional conventions rewrote southern state constitutions. Black men and women sought to define freedom through reordering their daily lives asserting their rights as free laborers pursuing access to land establishing community institutions such as schools and independent black churches and reestablishing family bonds that had been torn apart under slavery. While some of its transformations proved lasting, others were rolled back on a tide of violence within twenty years of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.ĭuring the Reconstruction era, voters ratified three new constitutional amendments, including one that redefined citizenship in the United States, and Congress passed the first federal civil rights laws in American history. Traditionally defined as running from 1865 to 1877, but perhaps more accurately understood as encompassing events taking place between 1861 and the 1890s, Reconstruction was a period of dramatic social, economic, and constitutional change for Americans north and south. The Reconstruction period following the American Civil War marked the transition from slavery to freedom and citizenship for nearly four million enslaved African Americans. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.
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