In his 1915 book, The Negro in the United States, W.E.B. DuBois wrote, "There was one thing that the white South feared more than negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency” (“The Negro” Par. 41). After the end of the Civil War, white southerners were faced with one of the worst nightmares coming to true: African Americans were freed from slavery, granted equal protection, and given the right to vote. As Reconstruction progressed, African Americans were confronted with significant change for the fist tim in the history of the United States. After the removal of the Federal Troops following the corrupt bargain of 1877, there was a period of relative calm in the South which was ended by the Supreme Court decision to legalize segregation in the Plessy v. …show more content…
The lives of African Americans regressed to their Antebellum states due to a combination of violence and legal action following the end of Reconstruction bringing about a period of violence and anarchy. During the Reconstruction Period, it seemed that Congress and the presence of Federal troops would be enough to rebuild and reform the decimated South. Lincoln’s plan to reintegrate the South was considered lenient and focused on bringing the South back into the Union as quickly as possible. After Lincoln’s death, Congress implemented a series of harsher regulations know as Congressional Reconstruction, which came to an end with the election of President Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1876 election (“America’s” Par. 3). In the election of 1876 Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote but disputes over the electoral votes in Florida, Louisiana and