Reconstruction Obstacles

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Many “revolutionary” movements have come and gone in America’s history, and one of them was the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War. The Reconstruction began in 1865 and marked its end in 1877. Known to bring the Union back together, the Reconstruction also had an outlook on ending the long-going war between the North and South. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation not only tried to give the blacks their rights, but it also meant a “new light” for slaves trying to end the war’s effects. The Reconstruction wanted to create a Union, and it was indeed a success in doing so, at the most part. However, this was not a big help for the people who had no way to break out for their freedom, for they could not even think about becoming …show more content…
Racism still existed and angry whites had become violent against the blacks. These struggles started with the Ku Klux Klan of 1866, who were comprised of a disguised secret society of white supremacists in Tennessee. They terrorized blacks by mob killings in the form of lynching: “…They wanted to maintain a South in which the white man orchestrated the black man’s movements.” These Klansmen dressed in costumes featuring themselves as ghosts to scare the poor blacks. There were many ways they terrorized blacks, and one way included by forcing their black victims to act like horses. James West Davidson, author of ‘They Say’: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race also mentions the Ku Klux Klan where he explains Ida B. Wells’ understanding of the Klan as to “suppress the negro.” They also had their own outlook on blacks and how they should be kept where they belong and the Democratic Party should control the country as it always had. This clearly shows how not only blacks struggled in this society, but they also had all their given rights taken away in a blink of an eye. This society of white supremacists ignored all rights given to the Freedmen by suppressing them under the supremacists’

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