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Reconstruction Dbq Essay

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The Civil War was supposed to solve the problem slavery caused in the United States in the late 1800s. Technically it did, but the freedoms and rights for African Americans in our country after the Civil War didn’t improve to be much better than before the war. I think that throughout the Reconstruction Era, the period of time when America started to come back together after the Civil War between 1865 and 1867, African Americans weren’t free because they were still treated like slaves without the rights of any white man. I feel a fair argument can be made to claim that African Americans weren’t free during the Reconstruction Era. Yes, because the 13th Amendment was passed, they couldn’t be slaves and were free by law, but they weren’t …show more content…

An example of a set of these laws that were followed and created mainly in the south are the Black Codes, or laws meant to establish racism in one southern town named Opelousas. A few of the laws in the Black Codes are listed in Document B and are as follows: “No freedman shall sell or exchange any article of merchandise within the limits of Opelousas without permission in writing from his employer; every negro is to be in the service of some white person, or former owner; no public meetings of negroes or freedmen shall be allowed within the town; and no negro or freedman shall be permitted to rent or keep a house in town under any circumstances.” How could African Americans be considered free if official laws said otherwise? Someone without the same rights as another can not be free. The only change that came after the Civil War for African Americans was that they no longer were slaves to people, rather just to specific laws and to most of America at that time. The Black Codes prove that African Americans weren’t free during the Reconstruction Era and that they were still treated just as lousily as slaves throughout this time

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