Tragically, however, very few of these goals were achieved. It seems that every time African Americans manage to make a step toward achieving true equality among white Southerners, whether in social, political, or economic terms, whites always react by committing violent acts against them. Initially, white Southerners (fearing black supremacy in Southern politics) fought to preserve the white supremacy under which Southern politics had always worked. This “brought most African Americans to the margins of the Southern political world” (Brinkley, 369). Second, African Americans struggled to survive once freed; they had nowhere to live and nothing to eat. For these reasons, most former slaves decided to remain and live on their plantations as tenants, paying rent by working the cultivated fields. Unfortunately, this also failed for African Americans due to the rise of the crop lien system. Finally, white Southerners countered the effects of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by establishing Jim Crow laws, which helped them maintain, if not increase, the continued level of segregation in the South. Ultimately, among the very few achievements of the African-American population during and after the Reconstruction Era, there was one significant enough to change the course of American history: the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. As a result of these amendments, “they would one day serve as the basis for a “Second Reconstruction” that would renew the drive to bring freedom to all Americans” (Brinkley,