African Americans And Reconstruction

With the North and the South still essentially split, and the government with its hands tied, it too in a precariously divided state, the majority of African Americans during our nation’s tenuous period of Reconstruction suffered displacement, instability, and discrimination. It may be said that those who were dwelling in the North during the war may have had an easier transition into a society that had already begun to find its identity in accepting African Americans as their neighbors and equals. While it is also a plain truth that ex-slaves in the South had the most amount of hatred and inequality exhibited to them from hostile and embittered ex-Confederates, it is a nonnegotiable reality that the African Americans living anywhere in America

Initially, this could have perhaps provided some slight measure of reprieve for the ex-slaves whose Southern leaders may have been preoccupied with fighting the Radical Republicans for their right to remain rooted in their federal as well as state government positions. Furthermore, those in the North were able to less hesitantly pursue their independent way of life in states that made things such as finding and keeping a job easier to achieve. A portion of ex-slaves from the South were able to travel to the North in hopes of a more attainable future; many, however, did not have the means of making such a journey or had young children so that they consented to fight for their new lives in their home states

Unfortunately, African American’s hard won equality soon began to deteriorate once more into new socially acceptable forms of segregation. Jim Crow laws now determined one’s rights instead of the Constitution, social barriers in the North too began to rise. For all, it was a time of insecurity and displaced blame, the brunt of which the African Americans took immeasurably. But in the midst of that time of social and political upheaval and unrest, there arose our amendments which to this day give people of all race in the United States the equal opportunity to pursue a better life for