What happened in the south soon after reconstruction

The South was still a war-torn region, overwhelmed by debt caused by mismanagement, and demoralized after a decade of racial war. Unfortunately, the pendulum of racial politics has gone from one extreme to another. While in the past, it was defended the imposition of severe penalties against white Southern leaders, now were tolerated new and humiliating discrimination against blacks. The last quarter of the 19th century saw the proliferation in the South of laws called "Jim Crow", that imposed segregation on public schools, limited or prohibited black access to many public facilities - such as parks, restaurants, and hotels - and denied most blacks the right to vote by imposing election fees and arbitrary tests to check readability.

Reconstruction is known as a dark period of political conflict, corruption, and setback that failed to achieve its noble initial goals and fell into a hole of virulent racism. It was granted freedom to slaves but the North completely failed to meet their economic needs.

In the context of U. S. history, the term "carpetbagger" is used to describe Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War, during Reconstruction (1865 to 1877).