Reconstruction Emancipation Quotes

“Slavery was the first great sin of this nation," [Shelby] Foote said. "The second great sin was emancipation, or rather the way it was done. The government told four million people, 'You are free. Hit the road.' Three-quarters of them couldn't read or write. The tiniest fraction of them had any profession that they could enter."

Foote felt the consequences of Reconstruction were still with us. But the fault wasn't all with the government or with white Americans. "What has dismayed me so much is the behavior of blacks. They are fulfilling every dire prophecy the Ku Klux Klan made. It's no longer safe to be on the streets in black neighborhoods. They are acting as if the utter lie about blacks being somewhere between ape and man were true.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War