Was reconstruction in the south a success or a failure?

Question

Reconstrution in the south was it a success or a failure in the 1950s to the present/

Answer 1

It depends on what you define as "success" Reconstruction was a long, hard time for the southern states to endure following a long, hard war that took many, many lives of their young men, leaving widows and orphans feeling defenseless and powerless against what they felt were "invaders" and militia that imposed their conception of "law and order" as they saw fit. The southern states were destroyed, their infrastructure, including housing (Sherman's march toward the sea, burning plantation houses, Atlanta's resources, etc.), economically, no one to harvest their resources they could plant, and the laborers needing payment and therefore being employed by the northerners that now settled in the area to call it home. So the "victors" claimed their victory, taking plunders of the war, imposed their ideology on the southern states, and couldn't understand why the population was not accommodating.

Philosophically, there are really no winners to any war, no success to any reconstruction of any place that was "reconstructed to the ideology of the "victors", and, if the victors think that that is the case, they need to take a deeper look at the whole picture, and understand the underlying problems that run through society today, that may have stemmed from a long ago "victory". Winners forget; losers do not. Look at any war.

Answer 2

1950s? Reconstruction in the South occurred in the post-Civil War era, in the 1860s and 1870s.