Why did life for African-Americans in the South change after the Civil War?

The major change in the lives of African-Americans after the Civil War resulted from the end of slavery. With the Confederacy in ruins, slavery was outlawed with the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, and thus the legal and social status of African-Americans was permanently altered. But the changes they experienced went beyond the legal abolition of slavery. Without land or capital, hundreds of thousands of African-Americans were thrust into a labor market with only their skills to offer. Many wound up in arrangements known as "sharecropping," in which plantation owners provided land which formerly enslaved people worked. They would then be allowed to keep a share of the proceeds of the sale of their crop (usually cotton.) This arrangement landed many African-American families in a cycle of debt that proved ruinous for many. But Reconstruction also led to the political enfranchisement of millions of black men as African-American voting rights were guaranteed by the federal government, eventually by a constitutional amendment. Many black men even were elected to public offices ranging from sheriffs to U.S. Senators. Many also joined volunteer organizations, formed churches and schools, and engaged in public life in other meaningful ways. While the gains of Reconstruction were rapidly rolled back, these would prove to be major developments in the lives of African-American men and women in the wake of the war. So life changed for black men and women due to economic necessity, the actions of the federal government, and above all their own efforts.