Reflection on the Reconstruction of America After the Civil War

 Reconstruction of America - Post Civil War

Reflection

As we watched the video on the reconstruction of America after the Civil War, the first thing that really surprised me was that in 2015, a man named Dylann Roof in his twenties went to a small Bible study group, where after, he unloaded a gun on the Black worshippers there. There were nine killed and one injured in the attack. I cannot believe that something like that is still happening in our world; there are way better things to worry about than hating someone purely because of their race. 

The Reconstruction Era had its ups and downs, but I think that the thing that stuck with me the most was that even though America made a lot of progress, people still have to fight for basic rights. There is still a lot of hate in our world today, and a lot of people can’t get jobs because of what they look like or where they’re from. 

In the video, one of the things that was said was, “America could finally be the land of freedom that it promised to be,” which was then followed by, “Black folks had no idea of the cliff they were heading towards.” This, to me, seems to say that even though there was a lot of work to reconstruct America, they still dealt with many issues; the video also mentioned the fact that Black people didn’t really care about what happened to them, as long as they were free. 

The Reconstruction Era is one of the best advancements, but also one of the worst setbacks in America. When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson became president and I really feel like that was when things really went south. Frederick Douglass remembered that Andrew Johnson refused to shake hands with a Black man, and he was trying to “keep Black people under control”. 

Overall, I think that the Reconstruction Era was a great advancement, but also a great setback to America because although former enslaved people were freed, they were still seen as less than.