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Failure Of Reconstruction Essay

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The period after the Civil War, which was meant to integrate the newly freed African Americans into a white-dominated society is called Reconstruction, but it stood no chance.. The goal was to bring an end to the cruel and inhumane treatment of African Americans. However, just about everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. From a radically Democratic and Southern President, to a growing popularity of mistreatment of African Americans; Reconstruction would never have succeeded.
After the Civil War, and likely the biggest catastrophe that hindered the progress of African American integration, President Johnson was elected into office. President Johnson may have seemed like a perfect president at first to radical republicans, but that …show more content…
The 14th and 15th Amendment both attempted to fix some of the long lasting problems that were caused by President Johnson. The Fourteenth Amendment gave African Americans rights to citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment, gave all men the right to vote, regardless of race or social status. Even with these amendments in place, people still found ways to treat African Americans unequally. Many Jim Crow laws existed. “Literacy Tests” were required for people to vote. You only didn’t have to take it if your grandfather also voted. However, most African American grandfathers were slaves at the time, making it very difficult for African Americans to even make use of their new rights. Newly freed African Americans had no way of making their own money. They were forced into sharecropping. An unfair form of sharing crops with someone, which was basically slavery. The Ku Klux Klan was formed, a group of people whose sole purpose is to oppress African Americans. Even the Supreme Court undermined the 14 and 15th amendments.
African Americans would not receive true freedom for another hundred years. Even though they were freed, the reconstruction itself was a failure. Even now there is still unrest and unfair treatment of minorities. There was no way that the reconstruction could have been a success. It was doomed to fail, and we still deal with similar problems to this day. Even the Ku Klux Klan is still

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