The next was the Fourteenth Amendment. It said all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens of the United States and of the state in which they lived. It said no state could limit the rights of these citizens.

Finally, there was the Fifteenth Amendment. It said a citizen of the United States could not be prevented from voting because of his color.

The Thirteenth Amendment freed all Negro slaves. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were supposed to protect their rights. These laws alone, however, did not succeed in doing this. It would take another century -- until Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders -- to make these rights a reality.

Yet the passage of these three amendments to the Constitution was still a historic step in making blacks full and equal citizens.

FRANK OLIVER:

These same laws and other actions of the radical Republicans changed the South in other -- less desirable, ways. They helped cause angry whites to form the Ku Klux Klan and other groups that terrorized blacks for years to come.

The laws also increased bitterness between the North and South that lasted many years.

Reconstruction changed the economy of the South, too. White landowners broke up their big farms into smaller pieces of land. They rented these to black farmers. With the land came seed, tools and enough supplies for a year. In exchange for this, the owner would get a large share of the crop raised by the tenant farmer.