Failure of Reconstruction

Read the excerpt and answer the following question.

“Poverty afflicted white Southerners as well as black, and tenancy, and the increasingly oppressive

system, were regional rather than racial institutions. But blacks, confronting a unique combination of legal and extralegal coercions, were more vulnerable to fraud and found it more difficult to obtain alternative employment. . . . Blacks in the cotton South owned a smaller percentage of the land in 1900 than they had at the end of Reconstruction and possessed few options other than moving from plantation to plantation each January in search of improved conditions.”

-Source: Eric Foner, historian, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, 2011

The pattern described in the excerpt most directly contributed to which of the following long-term developments?

(Choice A)
the growing economic gap between rich landowners and poor white and black farmers in the South
(Choice B)
the formation of cooperative organizations calling for increased railroad regulations
(Choice C)
the migration of German and Irish immigrants to the West to find cheap and available land
(Choice D)
the increase in troops to address the racial discrimination in these districts

AP®︎/College US History

Course: AP®︎/College US History > Unit 5

Problem