Just two years removed from slavery, Blacks were elected to state governments and Congress. All told, 600 Black Republicans joined state legislatures, 14 went to the U.S. House of Representatives, and 2 went to the U.S. Senate. Six African Americans became lieutenant governors, and thousands more held lesser offices, including judges and sheriffs.
(...) It highlights the complexity of the creation of the racial order that would dominate politics in the South for 100 years after the Civil War. Many people think that after the Civil War, Jim Crow became the law of the land. On the contrary, Jim Crow laws came into existence almost 30 years after the Civil War as a counterrevolution against the attempt at multiracial democratic rule across the South.