Reconstruction Dbq

Following the Civil War, the U.S. was in a period of reconstruction. From 1865-1900 many promises were made on the social and political changes that would impact the lives of African-Americans, such as new amendments and the Freedmen's Bureau, however, though there were many successes, practices like black codes, poll taxes, and the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson all ultimately showed that the reconstruction era was a failure. This caused African-Americans to be stuck in a limbo of searching for fair and equal treatment that they would not receive for decades to come.
A step in the right direction came through the passing of the thirteenth amendment in 1865 which abolished and prohibited slavery, the passing of the fourteenth amendment in 1868 which said that all people born in the U.S. were citizens, and the ratification of the fifteenth amendment in 1870 which said that no one can be kept from voting due to their race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Through the passing of these three amendments, recently emancipated slaves were supposed to be ensured equality, however, voting rights in the south for African-Americans didn’t last once reconstruction ended.

These “codes” restricted the rights of newly freed African-Americans by prohibiting them from renting land, borrowing money to buy land, forcing them to sign work contracts, and prohibiting them from testifying against whites in court. Another example of segregation was through poll taxes and literacy tests that were used to not allow African-Americans to vote. One success to come from reconstruction in the south was the election of two African-American senators (Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce) and over a dozen African-Americans to the House of Representatives. There was backlash from this that caused bitter resentment from