American Experience on PBS

“Reconstruction” concludes by following whites and blacks in Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana between 1867 and 1877. It begins with the granting of widespread voting rights for blacks in the South, and with whites “preparing for the worst,” says narrator Dion Graham. It wouldn't end that way for South Carolina rice planter Frances Butler, who was not at all pleased to “negotiate” with her family's former slaves. Their leader: Tunis Campbell, who would soon be elected to the state Senate. In Georgia, too, blacks were elected to the legislature. And in Louisiana, Vermonter Marshall Twitchell began amassing both cotton lands and political power. Local whites, who resented Twitchell deeply, called him a “carpetbagger.”