Reconstruction: Social Inequality In The United States

Reconstruction was a notable point in the United States’ history which established a tone for the social and economic opportunities that freed African-Americans would obtain after the Civil War. The South suffered a huge loss in population and a receding economy. However, the biggest victims of Reconstruction were the people who Reconstruction was targeting to help. During Reconstruction, freed African-American slaves were at the bottom of a rigid hierarchy and were offered very little hope in terms of upwards social and economic mobility. African-Americans were truly the ones who had the greatest losses during Reconstruction. Continuing on to another point in history, skilled craftsmen also shared a similar but less severe struggle for personal sovereignty in the workplace. Both of …show more content…
Plantation owners began to abuse the desperate situation that freed slaves were in and using sharecropping, bankrupt and forced freed slaves to be indebted in a vicious cycle. These plantation owners, despite having lost profits from loss of labor and undercut prices of cotton, managed to create profit at the expense of freed slaves’ plights thus were the “winners” of Reconstruction. Attempts to rise in the concrete social hierarchy through means of education were common but unsuccessful regardless of African-Americans’ initial success, since education was eventually discouraged due to brutal domestic terrorism involving arson and murder, instigated by white supremacists. Those sympathetic to African-Americans, such as teachers, were also targets of terrorism regardless of the color of their skin. Thus, white Americans who believed in white supremacy and actively supported their