Reconstruction was a prominent event that occurred after the Civil War. Congress, President Andrew Johnson, Hiram R. Revels, Republicans, Democrats and freedmen all played a role in the reconstruction between 1865 and 1877. In reconstruction, Blacks gradually started to gain independence from the South. Unfortunately, there were some downsides to reconstruction, as a lot of the times there were riots, rebellions, and even deaths. Sometimes, there were even times where Freedmen were even worse than before. Because of this, Congress started getting involved and executing its own plan for the Reconstruction of the South. Congress passed the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments as well as putting in reconstruction acts for the South.
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Another problem was how the government was working against them by the aforementioned literacy tests. These were tests created by the South directly after the Civil War. These were long written tests that would test if they truly knew enough about the United States (typically given to black people) to vote for public office and the president. The tests were designed specifically to be very difficult to pass, even for United States patriots who spent their whole lives focusing on the United States. This also didn’t help that the KKK was in full force around the same time, even if someone managed to pass this almost impossible test they would be hunted and found by the KKK as seen from this quote from the Abrom Colby testimony, “The klansmen broke my door down, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me for 3 hours or more and then left me for dead.” They had also asked if he would not vote for the black politician and he said no, that he would stand up for what he did believed in and was whipped 1000 times. Another thing they were greatly affected by was the sharecropping system, which they thought was a good way to make money but were tricked and made half the money they would be making as well as debt from the landowners store leaving them with basically no money afterwards and making the landowner rich. Basically, just everyone was working against black people and they basically had nowhere to
Another problem was how the government was working against them by the aforementioned literacy tests. These were tests created by the South directly after the Civil War. These were long written tests that would test if they truly knew enough about the United States (typically given to black people) to vote for public office and the president. The tests were designed specifically to be very difficult to pass, even for United States patriots who spent their whole lives focusing on the United States. This also didn’t help that the KKK was in full force around the same time, even if someone managed to pass this almost impossible test they would be hunted and found by the KKK as seen from this quote from the Abrom Colby testimony, “The klansmen broke my door down, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me for 3 hours or more and then left me for dead.” They had also asked if he would not vote for the black politician and he said no, that he would stand up for what he did believed in and was whipped 1000 times. Another thing they were greatly affected by was the sharecropping system, which they thought was a good way to make money but were tricked and made half the money they would be making as well as debt from the landowners store leaving them with basically no money afterwards and making the landowner rich. Basically, just everyone was working against black people and they basically had nowhere to