Following the defeat of the Confederate States in the American Civil War, Texas was mandated to rejoin the United States of America. The Union split the Confederacy into 5 military districts, meaning the Union Army soldiers officially occupied the state starting on June 19, 1865 to enforce the terms of surrender. As part of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, passed over a Presidential veto, Confederate states had to write and ratify a new constitution and ratify the 13th and 14th amendments. For the next nine years, Texas was governed by a series of provisional governors as the state went through Reconstruction. In 1866 Texas held a Constitutional Convention and in 1869, the United States Congress passed an act allowing the citizens of Texas to vote on their new State Constitution. Later that same year, President Grant approved their Constitution. Texas fully rejoined the Union on March 30, 1870, when President Grant signed the act to readmit Texas to Congressional Representation. Texas later repealed the State Constitution of 1869 and enacted the Texas State Constitution of 1876 on February 15, 1876, which remains their current state constitution though with numerous amendments. Even before the Civil War, Northern states had implemented Black Codes to restrict the labor and movement of freedmen, which was allowed under their rewritten Constitution of 1876. After the Civil War white southerners used every means available to pass laws (Black Codes) to keep freed slaves disenfranchised and excluded from white society. Governor Edmund J Davis would be the last Republican governor of Texas, as he was defeated by Democrats who largely used fraud to remove him from office.

Much of the politics of the remainder of the century centered on land use and Westward Expansion. Congress passed the Homestead Act and Dawes Act to regulate the use of western lands. Guided by the federal Morill Act, Texas sold public lands to gain funds to invest in higher education. New land use policies drafted during the administration of Governor John Ireland enabled individuals to accumulate land, leading to the formation of large cattle ranches. Many ranchers ran barbed wire around public lands, to protect their access to water and free grazing. This caused several range wars as well as Indian Wars. Governor Lawrence Sullivan Ross guided the Texan legislature to reform the land use policies.

The state continued to deal with the issues of racism, with hundreds of acts of violence against black citizens, as whites tried to establish white supremacy. Ross had to personally intervene to resolve the Jaybird-Woodpecker War in Fort Bend County. Sheriff Jim Garvey (a Woodpecker) feared that there would be armed battles between the State's Rights Democrats (the Jaybirds) and the black Federalist Republicans who had retained political power (with their white Federalist Democrat supporters, known as Woodpeckers) for 22 years. At Garvey's request, Ross sent two militia companies, which managed to impose a four-month peace. In August 1889, Ross sent four Texas Rangers, including Sergeant Ira Aten, to quell the unrest. Violence erupted, leaving four people dead and injuring six. The following morning, the Houston Light Guard arrived and instituted martial law; that evening, Ross arrived with an Assistant Attorney General and another militia company. Ross fired all the local Woodpecker and Republican civil officials and called together representatives from both factions. On his suggestion, the two groups agreed to choose a mutually acceptable sheriff to replace Garvey, who had been killed in the firefight. When they could not agree on a candidate, Ross suggested Aten; both groups finally agreed, thus halting the conflict.

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The Freedmen's Bureau was set up to help manage the transition for freedmen and oversee their labor contracts under the free labor system. During Reconstruction, incidents of white violence against blacks increased as whites struggled to reassert white supremacy. By the late 1870s, preceded by the Black Codes, the Democratic-dominated state legislatures passed laws to impose legal segregation in public facilities and other "Jim Crow" laws. Nonetheless, freedmen organized, joined the Republican Party, and started to participate in politics.

Texas passed a new constitution in 1876 that segregated schools and established a poll tax to support them, but it was not originally required for voting. In 1901 the Democratic-dominated legislature imposed a poll tax as a requirement for voting, and succeeded in disenfranchising most blacks. The number of black voters decreased from 100,000 in the 1890s to 5,000 by 1906 in the era that has come to be known as the Jim Crow South.

Juneteenth

Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. Originating in Galveston, Texas, it is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States. It is celebrated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865 announcement by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had officially outlawed slavery in Texas and the other states in rebellion against the Union almost two and a half years earlier. Enforcement of the Proclamation generally relied on the advance of Union troops. Texas being the most remote of the slave states had a low presence of Union troops as the American Civil War ended; thus enforcement there had been slow and inconsistent before Granger's announcement. Although Juneteenth generally celebrates the end of slavery in the United States, it was still legal and practiced in two Union border states (Delaware and Kentucky) until later that year when ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished chattel slavery nationwide in December. Celebrations date to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. It spread across the South and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s.