Dbq Essay On Reconstruction

In the 19th century, slavery and the Reconstruction was a sore subject for the South. Reconstruction forged civil rights for African-Americans, but once the North’s influenced waned in the South, the South terrorized African-Americans and blocked them from accessing their newfound rights. While Reconstruction may have brought civil rights, those rights were quickly squashed by the South’s racism. Even after certain freedoms were securely gained, every new attempt to make African-Americans equal to the white populace was contested. A large group of people were happy to see slavery ended and civil rights rise. However, the majority of white southerners, particularly after being disenfranchised by the Civil War, were bitter and angry. They had lost their ways of life, their lands, and slaves that they considered to be their property, therefore they took out their anger on the only people they could: their former slaves. In Leon F.

Certainly there is a difference between the time when posters of lynched black men were published and graves of Klu Klux Klan members were treated with admiration (Document E) and when it was seen as commonplace that, “Whereas it is essential to just government we recognize the equality of all men before the law… whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion” (Document C). In the same vein, it is hard to tell exactly what freedoms were actually offered to slaves after Reconstruction. Certainly, there were more legal freedoms and protections. However, those freedoms and protections usually weren’t respected in the south. Sometimes they were contested in courts, with people arguing that certain acts were government overreach (Document F) or complaining that, “Mere discriminations on account of race” (Document G) should still be acceptable. Racial minorities have always had to face discrimination, both societal and legal, and Reconstruction didn’t solve that issue