Why is Reconstruction referred to as a "successful failure"

Reconstruction was a failure inasmuch as it failed to establish enduring equality for African-Americans in the South. Indeed, Reconstruction never witnessed any serious strides toward establishing social or economic equality, and only temporarily led to political equality. Even before Reconstruction was well underway, it was being undermined by whites in the South eager to retake control of Southern society. Northerners tired of what seemed to be a failed experiment in racial equality by the 1870s,...

Reconstruction was a failure inasmuch as it failed to establish enduring equality for African-Americans in the South. Indeed, Reconstruction never witnessed any serious strides toward establishing social or economic equality, and only temporarily led to political equality. Even before Reconstruction was well underway, it was being undermined by whites in the South eager to retake control of Southern society. Northerners tired of what seemed to be a failed experiment in racial equality by the 1870s, and Reconstruction was already over in many states by the time it formally came to an end in 1877.

Despite these failures, as many historians have observed, Reconstruction was a remarkable period in which the roots of African-American political consciousness found fertile soil. Black men and women in the South formed churches, schools, voluntary organizations, and clubs that would provide the foundation for community activism long after Reconstruction's end. It also witnessed the passage of constitutional amendments (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth) which would provide constitutional justification for legal challenges after World War II.

W.E.B. DuBois, whose 1934 work Black Reconstruction was the first to tell the story of Reconstruction from the perspective of African-Americans, termed Reconstruction a "splendid failure." It was noble in intent but failed in practice due to the factors mentioned above. Its failure ushered in almost a century of Jim Crow and white supremacy, but it also gave rise to some of the forces and institutions that would enable the African-American community to resist.