According to historian Eric Foner, what did W. E.B. Du Bois mean when he described Reconstruction as a “splendid failure”?

How did the life of sharecroppers affect their children? children went to school because the farms were small, with little work, children had to work on the farm, so they rarely went to school children learned skilled professions as they worked around the farm. children left home when they became adults because the land wasn't theirs.