The Reconstruction Era

            The Reconstruction was the time period directly following the civil war. It was a time where the meaning of being a citizen of the United States of America was redefined. The slaves had only recently been freed and the north and south had freshly been merged together. There was a lot of conflict between peoples, north and south, black and white, and between different political parties. But despite the conflicts there was incredible growth in the United States. The Reconstruction of America lasted from 1865-1890 it was during those years that the likes of Tomas Edison, Mark Twain, P.T Barnum, Boss Tweed, Ida B. Wells, and many more famous Americans made their name know.

            Immediately following the war, blacks knew a freedom that they had never experienced before. But that freedom quickly turned to oppression that was quite possibly worse than what they had endured during the war. Amendments such as the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were made to protect the rights of black Americans by giving them the opportunity to vote and legally do anything a white man could do. But even though the amendments had been passed, many people found loopholes to the rule that made it so that they could oppress black people without it technically being because they were black. For example if a store owner had a rule that only people who could read and write were allowed in his store, there was a good chance that would apply to a vast majority of the black Americans as many of them had not ever received formal education. But even still others would attack black people illegally. During the reconstructing there was a sickening amount of black men, women, children that fell victim to the horror of lynching. Some people saw lynching as an act of vigilantism, but in reality they were more or less hate crimes. Killing someone purely because you didn’t like who they were or what they looked like, and in extremely inhuman ways is far from vigilantism.

            But the reconstruction era was not just a time of hardships for black Americans, it was hard from all Americans. There was a lot of confusion on how the government would be run and how laws would be passed and other such things. But despite the confusion and conflict, the reconstruction era was a time that would shape the United States of America into the country it is today.