What was the status of slaves after the Civil War?

In 1865, before the conclusion of the Civil War, Congress established an institution called the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman, and Abandoned Lands, later referred to simply as the “Freedmen’s Bureau,” within the War Department. This department would last well into the post-war period, through the Johnson Administration. The Freedmen’s Bureau made as its mission the provisioning of emancipated slaves all manner of material and social assistance to help them begin to create new lives and establish independence for themselves and their families. The federal government funded the Bureau to provide former slaves with clothes, fuel, new living quarters, and a suitable education for them and their children. Furthermore, representatives of the Freedmen’s Bureau helped negotiate labor contracts with potential employers of freed black men and women and helped them become incorporated into Northern medical and administrative networks.
Unfortunately, Congress was unwilling to enact measures to deal with the deeply imbedded racism and social prejudices that these former slaves had to contend with after emancipation. Therefore, while the Bureau provided legal recognition to black Americans in the abstract, it did little to alleviate the animosity many former plantation owners and other white Americans felt about the erosion of the plantation economy and entire pre-war cultural hierarchy. Thus, legally, former slaves enjoyed a protected status, but practically they were still targets of indiscriminate persecution. For example, in the South, certain unwritten practices known as the “black codes” characterized the ways in which former white slave owners treated emancipated black residents who decided not to move North. Southern legislatures, particularly in former slave-states like Mississippi, passed laws forbidding emancipated blacks from marrying interracially, practicing certain trades, or owning farmland. Furthermore, white lawmen often turned a blind eye to violence and discrimination committed against black freemen, leading to the rise of hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Ultimately, though emancipation freed former black slaves on paper, life in former slave states was still extremely repressive, and many suffered as a result.