All of the “black codes”, a series of laws that forced blacks to sign labor contracts requiring them to work at a job for a full year, laws that permitted employers to whip black workers, and laws that allowed states to jail unemployed blacks and hire out their children, that violated or contradicted the equality of any man were overwritten by civil rights bills pushed by the Radical Republicans. The first goal of the 12-year reconstruction was to build a lifestyle of social equality for all the African Americans living in the south. This was the first time the South had been forced to put the equality of all persons before the law. One of the first changes to South under went due to the Reconstruction were the rights given to them stating that they could establish an educational system for their children as well as for themselves. And gradually, towards the end of the reconstruction in 1875, in states like Mississippi, Florida, and South Carolina approximately half of all children went to school. With the same amount of knowledge available to African Americans as there was for whites, it led them to get slightly better jobs, with better pay. The main idea behind African Americans being given the right to a school system was a good one, as well as an important addition to the South’s new government. However it subconsciously began the insatiable chain reaction of segregation. Segregation existed in all the public universities, except in New Orleans and the University of South Carolina. Instead of following the African Americans into an already established schooling that the whites set up and attended, their 14th Amendment rights were violated, and they were placed in a separate school. As much as the Reconstruction failed to change in equal educational rights, it failed in civil rights as well. A person can easily say that the only successful social achievement that came out of the Reconstruction was the 14th Amendment...
