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Reconstruction was the period after the American Civil War from roughly 1865 to 1877, during which attempts were made to implement full freedom and constitutional rights for African Americans following emancipation.
The U.S. federal government sought to redress the inequities of slavery and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded from the United States.
Reconstruction is one of the most misunderstood periods in American history and was long characterized, inaccurately, as a time when vindictive Radical Republicans in Congress imposed corrupt rule by incompetent Black Americans and thieving Northern interlopers on the defeated Confederacy.
African American male suffrage“The First Vote," illustration from Harper's Weekly, November 16, 1867, showing African American men, their attire indicative of their professions, waiting in line for their turn to vote.
A.R. Waud/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-19234)Since the late 20th century, Reconstruction has been viewed more sympathetically as a revolutionary experiment in interracial democracy.
Reconstruction brought new laws and constitutional amendments (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments) that permanently altered the federal system and the definition of American citizenship.
In the South a politically mobilized Black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican Party to power and with it a redefinition of the responsibilities of government.
Public education, nonexistent for either Black or white children throughout most of the South, was widely introduced.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.Sixteen African Americans served in Congress during the Reconstruction era, including two U.S. Senators: Blanche K. Bruce and Hiram Rhodes Revels.
Vehement opposition to Reconstruction by white Southerners spawned white supremacist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, that engaged in widespread racial violence.
Where Reconstruction was once depicted as a tragedy because it was attempted, it is now seen as a tragedy because it failed.
When Reconstruction ended, voting by Black people was suppressed, and the system of Jim Crow segregation and discrimination was instituted.
