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African Americans After Reconstruction Essay

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The predominance of racism in the United States greatly affected the progression on the reconstruction of the nation. Effort was needed to be given in order for the black citizens to be fully accepted into society after the war, and most of the white people in the nation were unwilling to give this effort. White supremacy and lack of effort both majorly hindered the reconstruction of the U.S., and the belief that black people had to work harder to get on a level ground with white people aided in the failure of the reconstruction. The racist whites of the nation all strongly resisted all efforts to integrate the black people into American society. Any attempts were immediately met by a negative response from the racist people in the nation. Fredrickson states, “As such, it inevitably called forth bitter opposition from hardcore racists, who attempted to discredit racial measures” (354). Despite the measures taken by the government to integrate society, the racists took every opportunity to discredit all efforts taken. The racist people of the United States played a major role in the failure of efforts to reconstruct the nation after the war due to their unwillingness to accept the integration. …show more content…

Southern whites and a lot of northern whites all took upon themselves the mentality that they were better than the blacks because of their skin color. “The new case was defined as ‘white supremacy’ --which in practice allowed Southern whites to reduce the freedman to an inferior caste, as they had attempted to do by enacting the ‘Black Codes’ of 1865” (Fredrickson 354-5) White people told themselves that black people were below them in order to justify the need for separate facilities for the different races. White supremacy helped the belief of black people being a lower species to contaminate the efforts of radical reconstruction, and it ultimately damaged the reconstruction

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