A CITY DIVIDED BY WAR
What was the result of the Civil War? Slavery was abolished but was it the end of the racial tensions that separated communities? What does it mean to memorialize the Civil War? This map shows the racial division that existed in the South before, during and after the Civil War and charts the relationships between influential people, significant events and important places and how these things positively or negatively contributed to integration or continued existing segregation of the South.
Initially, the end of the Civil War provided African Americans with several liberties, but these lasted briefly. Before the end of the Reconstruction Era, African Americans were already being denied many of the rights they were initially given. Conservative Democrats and white supremacists had taken back control of the government through the use of violence and intimidation.
This map illustrates the constant back and forth struggle in which African Americans were afforded and denied rights over the years. Though the Civil War helped to abolish slavery, the world remained very separate and unequal. Evident in current events, battles for integration and equality are ones that continues today.