The Reconstruction Amendments really paved the way for Congress to exert civil rights and for the Civil Rights Movement to begin. They were a base for this “second reconstruction” development of the 1950s and 60s, which brought about the framework for officially ending racial prejudice and segregation, and introducing new freedoms such as suffrage in the U.S. Although they did not have tremendous effects during their time, they did bring up new ideas and concepts that urged people to fight for their limited freedoms, and would launch America into the Gilded Age, a time for industrialization and urbanization. They helped to formally terminate slavery and the superiority of whites, which had been present in the U.S. since the Revolutionary War. “These laws and amendments reflected the intersection of two products of the Civil War era — a newly empowered national state and the idea of a national citizenry enjoying equality before the law” (Foner).