To what extent is it valid to claim that Reconstruction was a failure? To what extent was it a ...

The answers students come up with will depend largely on how they define success and failure. If Reconstruction's success is defined in terms of fundamentally remaking the South, then it was a failure. By 1877 there were no Republican governments; those who had been in power before the Civil War were, by and large, still in power. Although legally enfranchised, blacks were either not voting or were being defrauded out of their votes. Nevertheless, Reconstruction did enable long-term changes to occur. The passage of the Fourteenth and (to a lesser extent) Fifteenth amendments made the civil rights movement possible.