Black Americans did pull themselves up by their bootstraps after emancipation.

Evidence

Progress was made with these historic laws. For the first time, black Americans were elected to Congress and state legislatures. They opened their own businesses and started families. Some even thrived and secured a small piece of the American Dream for themselves. They literally pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 264

Categorization

• XREF: Brown pre-emptively concedes this point against the ‘pull yourself up’ objection — the argument that despite this achievement, the system still stacked wealth against them.
• QUESTION: This concession is a deliberate rhetorical move — worth examining how conceding bootstrap success strengthens rather than undercuts the reparations case.