Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Constitutional amendments===
Three constitutional amendments, known as the Reconstruction amendments, were adopted. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, guaranteeing [[United States citizenship]] to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and granting them federal civil rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in late February 1869, and passed in early February 1870, decreed that the right to vote could not be denied because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". Left unaffected was that states would still determine voter registration and electoral laws. The amendments were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen. Northern congressmen believed that providing Black men with the right to vote would be the most rapid means of political education and training.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Many Blacks took an active part in voting and political life, and rapidly continued to build churches and community organizations. Following Reconstruction, White Democrats and insurgent groups used force to regain power in the state legislatures, and pass laws that effectively [[Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era|disenfranchised]] most Blacks and many poor Whites in the South. From 1890 to 1910, Southern states passed new state constitutions that completed the disenfranchisement of Blacks. U.S. Supreme Court rulings on these provisions upheld many of these new Southern state constitutions and laws, and most Blacks were prevented from voting in the South until the 1960s. Full federal enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did not reoccur until after passage of legislation in the mid-1960s as a result of the [[civil rights movement]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

For details, see:
{{Prose|section|date=October 2020|reason=WP does not inject "see also" lists right into the middle of articles. These things needs to be put into a proper paragraph that explains their relevance and interconnection to the material being presented here. This is also a confused mixture of sweeping topics and very narrow articles on specific legal cases.}}
* [[Redeemers]]
* [[Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era]]
* [[Jim Crow laws]]
* ''[[United States v. Cruikshank]]'' (1875),<ref>{{cite journal |last=Pope |first=James Gray |title=Snubbed landmark: Why ''United States v. Cruikshank'' (1876) belongs at the heart of the American constitutional canon |journal=[[Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review]] |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=385–447 |date=Spring 2014 |url=http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/385_Pope.pdf |access-date=November 15, 2015 |archive-date=January 20, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170120170455/http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/385_Pope.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Greene |first=Jamal |title=Thirteenth Amendment optimism |journal=[[Columbia Law Review]] |volume=112 |issue=7 |pages=1733–1768 |jstor=41708163 |date=November 2012 |url= http://columbialawreview.org/thirteenth-amendment-optimism/ |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150107063310/http://columbialawreview.org/thirteenth-amendment-optimism/ |archive-date=January 7, 2015}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20151117023919/http://columbialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/1733-1768.pdf PDF version].</ref> related to the [[Colfax Massacre]]
* [[Posse Comitatus Act]] (1878)
* ''[[Civil Rights Cases]]'' (1883)
* [[Civil rights movement (1896–1954)]]
* ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (1896)
* ''[[Williams v. Mississippi]]'' (1898)
* ''[[Giles v. Harris]]'' (1903)