<span>new Southern state legislatures passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction, which began in 1867, newly enfranchised blacks gained a voice in government for the first time in American history, winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces–including the Ku Klux Klan–would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.</span>
He was criticizing their teachings and practices.
The concept of "normalcy" was based on nostalgia for an earlier America. The idea of nostalgia was new in Americans and since America was a new country, the forefathers wanted progress and did not want to look back in the past mentality.
