The time after the Civil War became known as the Reconstruction. The American government sent soldiers to the southern states to protect the Blacks and their newly won freedom.

Although they were officially free, most of them still lived in poverty and in very bad conditions. In the South they worked as sharecroppers, farmers who cultivated land and could keep a share of what they grew for themselves.

Whites continued to discriminate against African Americans. Blacks were not allowed to attend the same schools or go to the same churches as whites. Segregation meant a complete separation of life between the two groups. Blacks were also kept from voting.

During the second half of the 19th century, violent groups started to terrorize the Blacks. The most famous was the Ku Klux Klan. Bands of white-hooded Klansmen rode through the countryside at night. They beat up and murdered many Blacks and white people who felt sympathy for them.



Three Ku Klux Klan members at a parade in 1922
Image: National Photo Company Collection,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons



Words

  • although = while
  • attend = go to
  • beat up = hit
  • century = a period of a hundred years
  • Civil War = two groups of the same country fight against each other
  • cultivate = to prepare and use land so that you can grow crops
  • discriminate against = to treat a person or a group of people in an unfair way
  • feel sympathy = to feel sorry for ; to understand what someone is going through
  • freedom = liberty
  • government = the people who rule a country
  • kept from = here: not allowed to
  • officially = in public, on paper
  • poverty = the situation of being poor
  • protect = guard , defend
  • Reconstruction =the time after the Civil War when the southern states rejoined the USA
  • segregation = when people of different races or religions are kept apart and not allowed to live and work in the same places
  • separation = when something is divided
  • share = part
  • sharecropper = a poor farmer who works on someone else's land and gives the owner most of the products in return
  • terrorize = spread terror
  • white-hooded = to have a white cover over your head