Spring 1865 was one of the most pivotal seasons in American history. The Confederate Army surrendered.

Jefferson Davis was captured.

And there were so many questions about how this country would move forward.

How do you reunite a country that's been torn apart by war.

How do you define citizenship?

Were citizens of former Confederate states,

immediately citizens of the Union again?

Were emancipated slaves, now American citizens.

There were 4 million black people in America in 1865,

and more than 3 million had been enslaved.

Yet the initial debate over how to reunite the country

moved forward between white northerners and southerners

and left black people out of the conversation.

By 1866, sessions in the south,

known as colored men conventions,

saw black men gathering in churches to organize and work with

white northerners to demand white southerners engage in conversation about defining citizenship.

Black people demanded it and white northerners agreed that the only way the

country could be reunited and began the long road to reunification with citizenship and an acknowledgement of rights for black people.

It would take four more years for that demand to even begin to be met and even then there was

compromise. With ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, black men became American citizens with a right to vote but

loopholes would suppress that right in the months and years following the Civil War, emancipated slaves felt unrest and fear.

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