Primary Source Document After 1877, following the withdrawal of
Union troops from South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida,
Reconstruction officially ended. In theory, African Americans
were free, but, in practice, their status was far from equal.
The intent of the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Amendment with
regard to African Americans was being whittled away by state
legislation in the South and Supreme Court decisions. African
American participation in all phases of American life was
qualified by prejudice; most avenues of social and economic
improvement remained closed. Frederick Douglass, the best-known
and most influential African American spokesman of his time,
considered these facts and offered a solution in the following
speech of September 24, 1883. It is our lot to live among a
people whose laws, traditions, and prejudices have been against
us for centuries, and from these they are not yet free. To
assume that they are free from these evils simply because they
have changed their laws is to assume what