The Reconstruction era describes the time between 1863 to 1877 where there was a transformation of the southern United States including not only state but also society. In the late 19th century, Reconstruction was on the rise. After the Civil war in 1861, The United States adopted the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America. The 13th amendment was passed in 1865 and it was created in order to abolish slavery. Then in 1868 the 14th amendment was created. This amendment granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States including slaves." The 15th amendment was created in 1870. It prohibited the federal and state governments from preventing a citizen from voting based on their race, color, or condition of servitude. These amendments were created to aid the four million African Americans in there new role as freed men. It is debated however, that these amendments did very little. My thesis is that even though these amendments were created to help equality of African Americans, the direct effect was not reached for hundreds of years following the moment of Reconstruction.
During the civil war, seven southern "slave states"" succeeded from the union. After it was over four years later, the confederacy collapsed, slavery became abolished and the United States government occupied the south. Lincoln's ten percent plan said that a southern state could be readmitted into the union once ten percent of it voters swore an oath of allegiance to the union. After Lincoln's death in 1865, President Johnson was appointed. That same year, Johnson made a proclamation of amnesty and pardon for citizens of the confederate states that had not been restored under Lincoln's ten percent plan. This easily pardoned the lower class but mandated a presidential pardon for the wealth upper class. .
Now that African Americans were now free citizens of the United States they needed to find a place to live and have lives of there own.