Reconstruction was essentially the time period when black people were being persecuted following the civil war. It was a time when black people were trying to make lives for themselves after slavery. A few ran and were elected in office, they got jobs. But white supremacists hated that and one of the things they did were lynchings. Lynchings were when white people would hang a black person and all watch as they died. It was a horrific thing that tragically still happens in some places around the world