African American Views On Reconstruction

From the years of 1861-1865 the bloodiest war was fought between the North and South, for the reuniting of the two nations, and to hopefully resolve the conflict of slavery. Even though the war lead to many casualties and violent actions, and ultimately the end of legal slavery, the time period after the war ended up being a disappointment to many. Reconstruction was meant to bring the nation back together, and for the United States to refurbish the former slave, and rebellious population. While this goal may have been attainable with President Abraham Lincoln, his death signaled the beginning of a difficult time. His successor, Andrew Johnson, was in fact racist, and therefore did not support the Reconstruction goals of African American
The KKK did not want to see their southern way of life change and fought actively against the idea that African-Americans should have civil rights. In fact, this group of white supremacists, committed acts of terrorism including; murder, and bombing to oppose the conceding of civil rights towards blacks. For instance, a Republican citizen, John W. Stephens was targeted by the KKK, because of his acts and beliefs to help African-Americans gain equality. In a Letter on Ku Klux Klan Activities, it states “He was stabbed five or six times, and then hanged on a hook in the Grand Jury room” (Albion Tourgee). Many lives were lost due to the actions that they preformed to grant blacks the equality that they deserved. The KKK played a huge part in causing the post-war Reconstruction to fail, and make sure not to give blacks civil and equal rights. As the society was beginning to become slave-like again, the idea of sharecropping was introduced, and the plans of Reconstruction were slowly starting to
This cycle of the paying off debts through crop production was used a great deal by landowners to basically bring back slavery in a way. As seen in the “Sharecroppers Cycle of Poverty,” When a sharecropper obtains land, he gives the landowner half of the crop purchased, then the landowner receives crop to sell from the sharecropper, and they get half the earnings without his debt for the year. The landowner then says that the sharecropper owes more then he has earned. In the cycle, landowner’s are gladly giving land to sharecroppers, because later they know that the sharecropper will end up doing more work to pay off debts. Therefore, another form of slavery started to develop with the sharecropper, because even though they were meant to have equal rights many southerners preformed many occupations to evoke slavery. One main goal of Reconstruction was to give equal rights to all African-Americans, and dissolve slavery. Although, with the idea of sharecropping slavery was only coming back into existence, causing the Reconstruction to fail yet