African Americans began to play an important role in Reconstruction politics as voters & elected officials. Between 1869-1880, 16 African Americans served in the House, 2 in Senate: One was Rev. Hiram Revels & Blanche K. Bruce, both of MS. Southerners accused "scalawags" & "carpetbaggers" of corruption. Most Southerners didn't support expanding African Americans' rights & violence against them remained commonplace. The Ku Klux Klan formed in 1866. Reconstruction brought some improvements to the South in education, but most schools were segregated. Most freed Blacks did not gain there own land and they were stuck as sharecroppers. By the mid-1870s, Northerners were disinterested in Reconstruction & Southern Democrats were regaining control in the South and gradually Congress, too. The Amnesty Act of 1872 pardoned most Confederates. We discussed the disputed presidential election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877. Who were "Redeemers" in the "New South?" Industry came to the South, but not to the extent it existed in the North. Agriculture with cash crops, tenant farming and share cropping still dominated the Southern economy. Reconstruction ended in 1877. With that came voting restrictions such as the poll tax, literacy test, grandfather clauses, segregation (1896 Plessy v. Ferguson), Jim Crow Laws, violence against African Americans.