Answer:
Continuities in the lives of African Americans in the 19th century: they did not own their own land, they faced support from some white Americans, they faced repression from others, and the government was largely unsuccessful at bringing about meaningful change and full rights for African Americans.
Changes in the lives of African Americans in the 19th century: Reconstruction brought some opening and freedoms initially, there was hope in the first decades after the Civil War, the economic fabric of the southern states began to change with smaller landholdings and the decentralization of the major industries like sugar and cotton.
Explanation:
Continuities: Once freed after the Civil War in the United States, many African Americans sought to reunite their families and to acquire land of their own. However, the promises of "forty acres and a mule" were not a reality for the majoring of former slaves. Ten years after emancipation barely five percent of former slaves in the ex-Confederate states were landowners. Those who did manage to get some land often lacked any means to develop it because there was no access to credit. While there were many white Americans who considered themselves abolitionists and who were against the institution of slavery, both before and after the civil war, there were also white Americans who wanted to continue with the status quo of slavery and separation of white and black communities. The same kind of antagonisms continued both before and after the civil war.
Changes: Reconstruction brought a lot of hope and some new freedoms for African Americans, but soon many of those advances in Reconstruction would be reimplemented in the form of state laws of segregation, especially in the southern states. The economic fabric in the South was changing. Many of the large sugar plantations in Louisiana were broken down into smaller units for example after the Civil War ended, and the cotton monopolies were breaking up, the production and sale becoming increasingly decentralized after the civil war.
