How did the newly free black population adapt to life in the US after the Civil War?

After the US Civil War, the freed Afro American slaves were facing a rough time no matter what they did. How they managed to survive as well as they did is remarkable considering the circumstances they found themselves in.

It should be remembered that even among the most ardent anti slavery abolitionists, there were problems.

Many of these abolitionists were true to their beliefs concerning the inhumanity of slavery, however, even these people did not believe in the equality of all peoples.

Before the War, many if not all of the Northern States in the Union had laws on their books that denied freed slaves the same civil rights as white people. There was rampant segregation in the North before and after the War.

In the South, the tolerance of a defeated Confederacy towards former slaves was hard to find.

Many of the former slaves migrated to the Northern States and took whatever employment was available. The new territories had an abundance of farmlands as did the Union States. The former slaves had good experience in farming and found work in that capacity. They also took jobs in any kind of work that was available such as in the hotel and restaurant industries or in textile mills IF and when such work became available. Adapting to the ways of the Northern States was difficult.

In the South former slaves found work as share croppers or on the Southern plantations were they once worked as slaves.

Some freed Afro Americans enlisted in the US Military.

It took decades to become even partially assimilated into the fabric of American society.