Project Thesis

Although Radical Reconstruction tried to create lasting constitutional change, white resistance and government withdrawal contributed to ending these efforts. This period left a long legacy of discrimination and delayed the unfulfilled promise of freedom and equality until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Our research explores how the Ku Klux Klan's violent backlash against Radical Reconstruction's legal reforms—such as the 14th and 15th Amendments and federal enforcement laws—attempted to reverse post-Civil War gains for Black Americans.

This resistance contributed not only to the collapse of Reconstruction's civil rights protections but also to the long-term direction of future civil rights policy in the United States.

The First Vote by A.R. Waud

Waud, A.R. "The First Vote." Harper's Weekly, 1867. Wikimedia Commons.