How Was The Period Of Reconstruction Fulfilled

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The period of Reconstruction can be described as the period after the Civil War in which the states formerly part of the Confederacy were brought back into the United States. The period of Reconstruction began in 1865 shortly after President Lincoln's reelection, and came to an end in 1877 when President Hayes withdrew the last federal troops from the South and the Republican government collapsed. While reuniting the Union, Reconstruction sought to enhance Black rights and freedoms in order to establish a truly free country after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, and the Thirteenth Amendment which was ratified in 1865. However, despite these important new Constitutional rights and protections for the freed African Americans, the promise …show more content…

One reason why the KKK limited social and cultural Reconstruction was because they were spreading white supremacy. The KKK had the strongly held belief that the white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the Black race, and should therefore dominate society. This mindset was one of complete opposition to Reconstruction. The KKK punished the Blacks therefore spreading white supremacy by bringing them to court, torturing, or even killing them. The period of Reconstruction sought to establish a culture in which Black citizens could thrive amongst white men, but because they were living in fear, they we not able to do this. One example that shows how the KKK destroyed any immediate hope of establishing a culture in which freedmen could thrive was when the Klansmen targeted Black education. The KKK and other white supremacists believed that the classroom made the Blacks too much like the whites and took them away from their work in the fields. In the textbook The American Promise, one section of chapter sixteen investigates what the KKK really wanted. In their explanation that authors say that, “In 1869, an Alabama newspaper reported the burning of a black school and observed that it should ‘be a warning for them to stick hereafter to the shovel and the hoe, and let their dirty-backed primers go.’” This quote illustrates how the KKK wanted to destroy any hope of the Black population ever being educated in hopes of keep their cultures separate. This severely limited Cultural Reconstruction for this