Most African-Americans in the South made their living as sharecroppers and were poor. Reconstruction protected their right to vote and to seek public office.
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The racial tensions were increased because of Reconstruction. Whites thought the Freedman's Bureau would give Blacks handouts and make them lazy. During Reconstruction Southerners created the Black codes as a way to stifle any progress that Blacks attempted to make.
When federal troops left in 1877
President Hayes kept removes troops from the South. The order was given on May 1st, 1877. The decision to end Reconstruction and return the rule to Southerners, soon resulted in the disenfranchisement of the Blacks in the South.
The South resisted reconstruction by passing special laws, like the Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws, in order to keep blacks down in a status practically the same as slavery.
Republicans