First, I want you to ponder two questions: 1) Where will you sleep tonight? 2) Where (and how) will you get your food? Got it. Good.
You probably learned that the Civil War ended in 1965 at Appomattox with Lee's surrender to Grant. It's a nice date with a clear event to follow, but as you've probably read recently, due to slow communication and some rather unscrupulous people, word of the end of the war would take a while to spread. In fact, Andrew Johnson (who is high on my list of most despicable presidents, but for other reasons--and not to be confused with Andrew Jackson, who's even higher on that list) did not officially declare hostilities ended until over a year after the signing at Appomattox. The 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery) had been signed by then.
Whew! Slavery's over! News went around and there were celebrations among the newly freed citizens of the U.S.!
And then they asked the two questions I asked you to ponder. Few former slaves had much of an education. Fewer still had any savings. Some freed citizens returned to the same place they were the day before and the years before that and worked for their former masters for wages that did not cover the same room and board that they had been provided before.
The first shots of the Second Civil War were fired to kill newly freed citizens who took "stole" food from their former masters. Following shots were on Black Americans who tried to pool money and organize for freed slaves the means to move on, live together, or get other work. The killing was so bad that the U.S. military was sent in (or ordered to remain, depending). Then the shooting began in earnest.
The Reconstruction had lofty goals, but the U.S. was literally still at war with itself. During the early years, former Confederates were not allowed to vote, let alone run for office (some did anyway). With the 15th Amendment, thousands of Black men (sorry, ladies, it will take another 50+ years for your rights to get going) took public office at the local, state, and even federal levels (most were Republicans, like Lincoln). Many would be lynched, their wives and daughters raped (like they had been as slaves), their sons killed, their houses and businesses burned, and yet they persisted anyway. Battles--with significant casualties, if nothing quite reaching the bloodiest battles first Civil War--continued between the Union forces and the newly formed KKK (whose white hoods were to stand for them representing the ghosts of Confederate dead). This continued for 10 years ... and then the North surrendered.
In 1877, due to the contested election of Rutherford B. Hayes, a settlement with the Southern Democrats who had been regaining offices due to attacks on Black men who voted (let alone ran for office), the troops were recalled ... and the real slaughter began. The devastation from the vengeance that the newly "vindicated" Confederates brought was beyond cruel. They worked to punish any Black citizen for the audacity of being "free" and worked diligently at their Jim Crow laws to reduce those freedoms to almost nothing. The Confederate flag began to fly over state buildings again in celebration of this victory and monuments glorifying Confederate leaders started to be put up in every town. To THIS DAY, many Southern schools still teach the "War of Northern Aggression" and literally "whitewash" history while Black voter suppression STILL occurs.
Unfortunately, it did not end there; however, I will.
... with this note: I don't feel guilt for that past (as I've been recently accused of); I feel disgust, and more so for the people and institutions that have continued it to the present. Those Jim Crow laws lasted for nearly a hundred years! There was not a Civil Peace during that time, but a barbaric system of discrimination and hatred that has yet to be fully dismantled! Meanwhile, good people I know and love are defending the monuments of that time because they take personal offense at have their privilege pointed out to them--and that disgusts me too, especially because I used to react the same way.
... I know better now. So should you.