The Reconstruction era refers to the period the Civil War when attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy. The U.S. federal government also needed to determine how to the 11 Confederate states back into the Union.

After the war, formerly enslaved African Americans responded to freedom in different ways. After celebrating the end of the war and their new freedom, most tried to with their separated families. Some set up new institutions, including schools, while participating in politics by voting and even serving in government.

Although formerly enslaved African Americans were land and resources from the government to set up their own farms, most did not receive these. Some who did receive land and resources later had them taken away. Newly freed people had to figure out how to survive and support their families.

For about 10 years after the Civil War, the federal government provided to the formerly enslaved and took steps under Reconstruction to protect their political and civil rights, but these advances were later overturned.

Although the Amendment protected Black men’s right to vote, many southern whites came up with ways to keep Black people from voting.

By 1900, , or blocking the Black vote, was almost complete, hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan used violence, intimidation, and to keep blacks from exercising their right to suffrage.

often surrounded polling places, so many black voters stayed away from the polls for fear of racial violence.

Some legislatures passed a , which required voters to pay money before they could vote. Many African-Americans were too poor to pay the tax and could not vote.

test laws required voters to be able to read a passage before voting. At the time, about of African-Americans could not read so they could not vote. Questions were designed so that the test-takers would pass or fail simply at the discretion of the test administrator.

Wouldn’t these practices exclude the vote? Southern policymakers found a way around this by enacting the clause, which anyone whose grandfather had voted from having to pay poll taxes or take literacy tests.