How Did Reconstruction Improve Life For African Americans?

Reconstruction did little to improve life for African Americans. While African Americans had been released from slavery, given the right to vote, and the ability to hold public office, the Southern states actively tried to stop African Americans from utilizing their rights, with the hope that life could return to the pre-Civil War norms, resulting in wide-scale racism and danger to African Americans. The 1890 Census shows that after Reconstruction many Black people remained in the Southern states. Likely because after Black men were emancipated, many of whom remained impoverished and forced to continue working as sharecroppers. The article Freed Persons Receive Wages From Former Owners, says that some freedmen had the benefit of choosing who they worked for and how much they worked as what they did
A black congressman, Henry Macneal Turner, describes the attempts of Southerners to deny his rights. Turner says.am I a man? If I am such, I claim the rights of a man. Turner believes that since he is a black man, Georgians do not accept him as a legal holder of public office. In another case, the President of Bolton’s Republican Club, Lewis McGee, was a political leader who wanted to be killed by local white men. While Black men could hold political office, many white men made it clear they were not wanted there, and Black men struggled to stay in positions of power for more than a single term. Some white men, believing in white supremacy, murdered many people believing in Black rights. The most notorious of these domestic terrorist groups, was the Ku Klux Klan. Data from the Freedmen’s Bureau lists murders in the Counties of Maury and Marshall between July 1867 and July 1868. With a total of 15 murders over the course of a year, only 3 arrests were made. Along with reports of riots and outrage. Freedmen underwent massive discrimination during Reconstruction and in the years