What is the Reconstruction Era in African-American literature in the nineteenth century?

Historians
generally agree to limit the Reconstruction period between 1865, when President Andrew Johnson
began his plan to reform Southern society, and 1877, the year the Republican Rutherford Hayes
won one of the most disputed elections in American history. That event is seen as the final blow
to the hopes of equality between the races that Reconstruction had initially stimulated in
African Americans.

The literature produced during these twelve years is
being rediscovered thanks to the renewed critical attention to African American literary history
in the last thirty years. A lot of works produced in...