How Do You Account for the Failure of Reconstruction to Bring Social and Economic Equality of Opportunity to the Former Slaves
After the Civil War, the southern soldiers were going back to devastated cities, destroyed railroads, and many cities were burned to the ground as a result of Sherman’s march from sea to sea. After the Civil War occurred, the slaves were given freedom from their owners, and slavery was banned. That attempt at reconstruction was not a complete fail, but it took a little bit of time for America to give social and economic equality to slaves. There were many attempts made by several different presidents, but not all seemed to work due to the South’s stubbornness. The failure of reconstruction later did not bring social and economic equality to former slaves in the south because of things like the Jim Crow laws and the South’s strong disproval of the outcome of the war. After the Civil War, several amendments were passed which granted black Americans the right of citizenship and the abolishment of slavery. The south eventually came up with ways around slavery like sharecropping, Jim Crow Laws, and white supremacist like the KKK. After the civil war was over the southern farmers had to come up with a way of producing their crops at a very low price, so they began sharecropping. Sharecropping was basically a step ahead of slavery, but the new freed slaves still could not make enough money to support themselves. Another reason as to why the African Americans could not socially be integrated with the whites is because of the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws segregated the whites and the blacks. There were laws that said that whites and blacks couldn’t be in the same school or share the same bathroom. Another set of laws that the south put on the African Americans was the black codes. The black codes consisted of curfews, vagrancy laws, labor contracts, and land restrictions. No blacks were aloud out after sunset or else they would be arrested. The vagrancy laws said that if any black was not working could be finned or whipped and sold into labor. Finally, the African