Question

question has to be in two paragraphs for history class study guide for exam

Based on the outcomes of Reconstruction. What alternatives did African Americans and black leaders pursue in the late nineteenth century?

Answer 1

Even after the Proclamation of Emancipation, two more years of war, service by African American forces and Confederacy's defeat, the country was still unable to address the issue of full citizenship for its newly liberated black population. The Reconstruction carried out by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means to re-entry them into the Union, and establishing the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a non-slavish society. However, the South saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vindictive imposition, and did not welcome it.

Following the Civil War, with the protection of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the 1866 Constitution and Civil Rights Act, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, participate actively in the political process, acquire former owners ' land, seek their own employment, and use public housing. Nevertheless, critics of this advance quickly rallied against the freedom of the former slaves and began to find ways to erode the gains many had shed their blood for.

During the years following the war, North and South black and white teachers, missionary groups, churches, and schools worked tirelessly to give the emancipated people the chance to learn. Former slaves of all ages took the opportunity to become literate. Grandfathers and their grandchildren were sitting together in classrooms trying to obtain the instruments of freedom.