How did life in the South begin to change for African Americans after the Civil War?

The first, and most obvious, way that life changed for African-Americans after the Civil War was that slavery came to an end. Millions of people that had been the property of Southern planters were now freed by the end of the war and the Thirteenth Amendment. While "black codes" passed shortly after the war placed severe restrictions on their newfound freedoms, the US Congress quickly instituted reforms as part of its Reconstruction efforts that contributed to still more changes. The Freedmen's Bureau, for example, created schools throughout the South to serve the black community, and many African-Americans, through churches and voluntary organizations, created their own educational institutions. While most black men struggled to obtain land, and were forced to enter into sharecropping arrangements with white landowners, they were granted the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment. Just a few years after slavery's end, black politicians sat in state legislatures across the South. A handful were even elected to Congress during Reconstruction. Ultimately, these changes were only temporary. After the end of Reconstruction, laws in the South established a regime of white supremacy that would last until after World War II. But the changes that emerged after the Civil War laid the foundation for black political activism.