Was Reconstruction after the civil war a success or failure? why?

You will
probably get a variety of responses to this inquiry; however most historians believe that
Reconstruction was a failure. Although Black Americans were no longer slaves, they made little
progress in other areas.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were passed
during Reconstruction, designed to make Black Americans citizens of the United States, guarantee
them civil liberties, and also guarantee them the right to vote. Military governments were
instituted in the South to protect the rights of former slaves. However, this did not stop
southern legislatures from enacting "Jim Crow Laws," successors to the former Black
Codes, which prohibited Blacks from equal access to many facilities. The following are
examples:

All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant,
shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to
the two races within the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same
license.

It shall be unlawful for colored people to frequent any park owned
or maintained by the city for the benefit, use and enjoyment of white persons...and unlawful for
any white person to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the use and benefit of
colored persons.

Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for
such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities.

All circuses, shows, and tent exhibitions, to which the attendance of...more than one
race is invited or expected to attend shall provide for the convenience of its patrons not less
than two ticket offices with individual ticket sellers, and not less than two entrances to the
said performance, with individual ticket takers and receivers, and in the case of outside or
tent performances, the said ticket offices shall not be less than twenty-five (25) feet
apart.

The right to vote was infringed with abandon,
often by requiring one to read and correctly interpret a portion of the state constitution
(whites were given a much simpler task, if at all, than Blacks;) requiring one to pay a poll
tax, establishing difficult residency requirements, and listing a series of crimes believed to
be common among the Black populace as disqualifications for voting.

When
Reconstruction ended in 1877, the determination of white Southerners to deny civil rights to
Blacks won out over the efforts of the federal government to ensure them.