“Reconstruction was a complete bust,” declared an enraged and overworked historian. “African Americans were no better off in late nineteenth-century America than they had been as slaves before the Civil War, and white southerners simply ignored federal laws and retained full control of the region.” Analyze this claim by examining the effects of Emancipation and Reconstruction on former African American slaves and the South as a whole from 1860-1877. Were any southern residents better off in 1877 than in 1860?
