"After generations of slavery, what would freedom look like?"
Even before Reconstruction (the period after the Civil War where newly freed slaves were given rights), white southerners opposed the concept. They demonized the very idea of a black man holding office or being allowed to vote. Racial violence, like lynching, were used to kill and otherwise drive newly freed black Americans out of the south. This is referred to the Great Migration.
Reconstruction was great on paper, but didn't execute well given the political climate. That being said, there was a period after the Civil War where black people began to hold office (even in the south). Organizations like the Freedmen's Bureau gave food, shelter, and other assistance to newly freed people. The Bureau allowed more than 1,000 schools to be set up in the south. Two black senators went into Congress. As I mentioned before, this sounds great, but the Bureau was poorly managed. Most jobs provided by the organization were given by plantation owners who enslaved blacks to begin with, and the Bureau mismanaged their money. Failure to keep up with expenses and the violent, racist attitude of the south caused the Freedmen's Bureau to be disbanded by Congress after pressure from white southerners. After the collapse, the banks the bureau ran lost over $3 million of the collective black American wealth. Allowing a win to white supremacists on a federal level did nothing but encourage the already present racial violence, either. On the other side, these events introduced intersectionality into politics. It's worth noting that Reconstruction didn't fail, but that it was violently overthrown by white supremacists.