Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on civil rights act. Reconstruction, also known as Radical Reconstruction, was the period after the American Civil War. During this time, the South was

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on civil rights act. Reconstruction, also known as Radical Reconstruction, was the period after the American Civil War. During this time, the South was in political, social, and economic turmoil and eleven Confederate states had already seceded from the Union during the wartime unrest. In response, the Union attempted to regain order in the Confederate states during the Reconstruction era. The ex-slave states were divided into 5 military districts by the Reconstruction Act of 1867 and an assistant commissioner was appointed to each district. (McElrath 2008 Afroamhistory.about.com) After the Civil War, Congress established a Bureau for the refugees,Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen's Bureau. We find in McElrath's article that it provided with food, medical care, helped with resettlement, and very noble it established schools. Due to inadequate funds, corruption and inefficiency it closed in 1870.While the Freedmen’s Bureau worked to help Southern blacks, opposition to their new freedom was mounting. In 1865, several Southern states passed legislation creating black codes. Depending upon the state, these laws generally restricted blacks’ right to own property, controlled where they were allowed to live, established a curfew, and forced blacks to work as agricultural laborers or as domestics. The Black Codes were quickly eliminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Act gave blacks the rights and privileges of full citizenship. (McElrath Afroamhistory.about.com 2008).