How did the lives of African-Americans change post-1865?

In some ways, African American lives changed after 1865. Slavery was officially outlawed, and during the Reconstruction period (1865-1876), there was some attempt not only to provide African American men with the vote but also to have their representation in state and federal governments. In fact, there were even African American Senators, such as Hiram Revels, who was elected by the legislature of Mississippi in 1870 (as state legislatures then chose senators). Many African Americans joined their own churches, which gave them a place not only for spiritual worship but also for political organizing.

However, in many ways, the lives of African Americans did not change after 1865. By the end of Reconstruction, new laws, such as vagrancy laws, tied them to plantations, where they worked as sharecroppers. Very few African Americans owned their own land, so they were forced to work for others in a system that kept them perpetually in debt. In addition, they were often denied educational and job opportunities in both the segregated South, ruled by Jim Crow laws, and less obviously but still just as rampantly in the North.

African-American lives changed after 1865 in several ways. The Civil War ended in April 1865. This had a huge impact on African-Americans.

The ending of the Civil War brought slavery to an end. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery. The plantation owners no longer owned their slaves. As a result, some African-Americans formally got married. Others went to search for family members that were living elsewhere. African-Americans built their own schools and their own churches.

The Freedmen’s Bureau was designed to help the freed slaves. African-Americans got medical care. Food and clothing were distributed to them. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped African-Americans get fair wages for the jobs they had.

Constitutional changes were made to help the African-Americans. African-Americans became citizens with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. They now had the rights that all citizens had. These rights couldn’t be taken away without due process of law. The Fifteenth Amendment prevented African-Americans from being denied the right to vote because they had been slaves. African-American males voted and held office.

For about ten to twelve years after the Civil War ended, African-Americans saw many areas of their lives improve. Unfortunately, once Reconstruction ended, some of those improvements were taken away.

How did life change for African Americans in the South after the Civil War?

With the exception of a short time during Reconstruction, life for African Americans in the South did not change that much, particularly in the economic and political realms.

Politically and economically, African Americans remained very much marginalized.  There were, of course, some African Americans who participated in the Reconstruction governments.  However, this did not last long at all.  Within two decades, blacks would be essentially disenfranchised and have little more in the way of political rights than when they were enslaved.  Economically, African Americans remained on the very bottom.  Most blacks were sharecroppers or tenant farmers.  They were often indebted to the extent that they were essentially tied to the land on which they worked. 

Socially, there were some real changes.  Most importantly, African Americans were free.  They were able to keep their families together without fear of being sold.  African American women were no longer subject to the sexual whims of their owners.  African Americans were able to start creating their own vibrant communities in ways that had not been possible under slavery.

The first, and most obvious, way that life changed for African-Americans after the Civil War was that slavery came to an end. Millions of people that had been the property of Southern planters were now freed by the end of the war and the Thirteenth Amendment. While "black codes" passed shortly after the war placed severe restrictions on their newfound freedoms, the US Congress quickly instituted reforms as part of its Reconstruction efforts that contributed to still more changes. The Freedmen's Bureau, for example, created schools throughout the South to serve the black community, and many African-Americans, through churches and voluntary organizations, created their own educational institutions. While most black men struggled to obtain land, and were forced to enter into sharecropping arrangements with white landowners, they were granted the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment. Just a few years after slavery's end, black politicians sat in state legislatures across the South. A handful were even elected to Congress during Reconstruction. Ultimately, these changes were only temporary. After the end of Reconstruction, laws in the South established a regime of white supremacy that would last until after World War II. But the changes that emerged after the Civil War laid the foundation for black political activism.