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WHEN FREEDOM CRIED OUT.
The Negro is the central figure in the reconstruction of the South.
Without the Negro there would have been no Civil War.

Granting a war fought for any other cause, the task of reconstruction would, without him, have been comparatively simple.

With him, however, reconstruction meant more than the restoring of shattered resources; it meant the more or less successful attempt to obtain and secure for the freedman civil and political rights, and to improve his economic and social status.
In 1861, the American Negro was everywhere an inferior, and most of his race were slaves; in 1865, he was no longer a slave, but whether he was to be serf, ward, or citizen was an unsettled problem; in 1868, he was in the South the legal and political equal, frequently the superior, of the white; and before the end of the reconstruction period he was made by the legislation of some states and by Congress the legal equal of the white even in certain social matters.
The race problem which confronted the American people had no parallel in the past.

British and Spanish-American emancipation of slaves had affected only small numbers or small regions, in which one race greatly outnumbered the other.