Reconstruction constitutional conventions created the South’s first public institutions

Evidence

Radical Reconstruction did bring about actual racial progress. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments—ending chattel slavery, granting Black people citizenship, and providing Black men the ability to vote—were passed. Southern constitutional conventions from 1867 to 1869 included Black delegates—about half of whom had been born in slavery—and white and Black elected officials introduced many Southern states’ first publicly funded education systems, penitentiaries, orphanages, and asylums for the mentally ill; expanded women’s rights and guaranteed rights to Black people; and reorganized local governments. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1270

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the baseline of genuine progress that the next paragraph reframes — giving the reader the counterweight they need to distinguish actual achievement from the reframing critique of its use.