Slavery History America

During the Civil War, the worst episode of the war was the Ku Klux Klan - under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest - founder of the Ku Klux Klan. They massacred Union soldiers at Fort Pillow on the Tennessee River on April 12, 1864. The Civil War experience was a high point in history. 


"After the War, the nation all but abandoned efforts at providing justice for the formerly enslaved except during a few short years from 1865 to 1876, known as the era of Reconstruction. After that brief period, during which southern blacks experienced significant political and social empowerment, there descended upon the region over 100 years of segregation, lynching, disfranchisement, and racial violence commonly known as the era of Jim Crow. Writing in the 1890s in the midst of Jim Crow, black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose father served as a Union soldier, wrote with pride about the Civil War experience of blacks who fought to free themselves from slavery, both actually and symbolically."


http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_overview.htm