There is no real "average" African American experience after the American Civil War. Experiences are going to vary wildly, depending on whether it was a rice plantation, cotton plantation, in the deep south, in the upper south, in an industrial area, former border state, etc...

In my area, along the South Carolina Coast, where I work on a old plantation, the former slaves had relatively stable lives. Unlike slaves in the upper south, slaves on a rice plantation were much less likely to be sold, and if they were sold, it was often to another rice plantation. This is one of the key elements to the development of Gullah Culture.

Because of these, there were much stronger kinship ties on former plantations, and because working in a rice field was kind of skilled agricultural labor, the former slaves were able to organize and essentially win better terms. As a result, former slaves in my area worked under what was called the two day system. Two days a week they worked in the owners rice fields. In return they got their own plot of rice field to farm and a house/provisions etc. The remaining 5 days a week they were free to seek jobs or work on other plantations.

This was not a perfect system, and it has roots in the American Civil War Port Royal experiment, but generally their lives were better than sharecroppers on cotton or tobacco plantations. Alot of this owing to the totally different dynamics present on rice plantations during the time of slavery.

When rice culture finally collapsed in the late 1800s, many of these African Americans were dispersed to find jobs in cities or to subsist on tiny patches of land. Some of them continued to grow rice into the 1950s, but it was never for commercial sale.