Summary What is freedom?”: reconstruction,

After the Civil War, Black Americans faced several challenges during Reconstruction. The meaning of freedom was contested, with changes to family dynamics and Black women shifting to the domestic sphere. Black churches and schools were established, and Black colleges like Fisk, Hampton, and Howard were founded. The right to vote was critical to formerly enslaved peoples. Land ownership was also important, but former slaves were denied access to land by President Andrew Johnson. Sharecropping was the dominant labor system, and it became oppressive over time. The aftermath of the war hurt white small farmers, who found themselves caught in the sharecropping and crop-lien systems. The debates over transitioning from slavery to freedom during Reconstruction had parallels in other Western Hemisphere countries where emancipation occurred in the nineteenth century.