Yikes! In a word, No.

W.E.B. Du Bois has a famous quote from his book Black Reconstruction that goes, "the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." The "moment in the sun" he's referring to is Reconstruction (1863 -1877) and more specifically after the passage of the 13th amendment abolishing slavery; the "back again toward slavery" is the period after 1877 (the book was published in 1935), when President Rutherford B. Hayes, made a deal with Southerners that in exchange for his election, he would bring the federal troops home--eroding the meager protection they afforded-- and allow "home rule" in the South. Note: This is not to say that Reconstruction was a universally "good" time for Black people. It was not. True, there were more black and black-friendly (Republican) government officials at this point in time, but the Freedmen's Bureau offered little protection and wavering commitment to the rights of Blacks and because whites could not exercise legal means of control, they resorted to extra-legal paramilitary organizations like the Ku Klux Klan during this period. For more on this, I highly recommend Eric Foner's masterwork Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 183-1877.

What followed Reconstruction was a systematic criminalization of black life throughout the South as "Redeemer" Democrats began gradually retaking control. The governments of the South began poking and prodding to test the very limits of how much they could get away without provoking the ire of the North. Turns out they could get away with a lot. State-by-state and county-by-county Black people could not spit in public areas, talk too loudly in the presence of white women, walk along the railroad tracks and other offenses. As part of the vagrancy laws, Blacks also had to prove that they were employed or could be arrested. Once arrested/convicted, states began leasing their prisoners to companies to be exploited for their labor. The business owners--many (most?) of whom were former slave owners--were responsible for their care. However, while during slavery, slaves were an investment so there was *some* incentive for their wellbeing, under the convict-lease system, there was none. Business owners who rented convicts--who by-and-large were Black--worked them to the very brink of human endurance. Here's a PBS documentary about it.: Slavery By Another Name. It goes outside of the timeframe, but it's still relevant. The horrors detailed in the early 1900s were no doubt solidified in the 1890s at least.

Interesting note about North Carolina: During the fight for control of the direction of the South, in North Carolina, Blacks--and their white (Republican) allies--had some notable victories prompting extraordinary reaction. This "Fusion" coalition was able to elect a Republican governor in North Carolina in 1896 after decades of Democratic control. To retaliate, Democrats--generally the white elite--convinced the white working class to turn on Blacks and used paramilitary organizations, such as the Red Shirts and the notorious Ku Klux Klan to intimidate Black and white Republican voters. In 1898, when an interracial Fusion ticket had won election in Wilmington, NC, the Red Shirts marched on the city and forced the Fusion government to resign under gun-point. It's the only successful coup to ever occur on U.S. soil. Source

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For those interested in connecting history to the present, the convict-lease-system exploited the same loophole and laid the precedent for the prison labor today. The 13th amendment forbids slavery except "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." To feed the convict-lease system, during and after Reconstruction, large numbers of black men--and some Black women--were convicted of vagrancy laws and other petty offenses so that their labor could be leased to planters and miners. Fast-forward to today, where the war on drugs and mass incarceration are used to keep prisons full (private and public) so their labor can be used by different industries--although they are technically paid meager wages. Prisoners in the federal prison system make mattresses, spectacles, road signs and body armor for roughly $0.90/hour. In California system, prisoners make textiles, do construction, fight fires and meat-packing. In Idaho, prisoners roast potatoes and in Kentucky they sell cattle source. The Louisiana Capitol and Governor's mansion currently uses prison labor for groundskeeping and janitorial services (source. For more on this, Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow is the authority on the subject.

Edit: formatting

Well those two decades saw the introduction of things like poll taxes, literacy tests, and the grandfather clause which were all used to prevent black people from voting. The grandfather clause was a "statutory or constitutional device enacted by seven Southern states between 1895 and 1910 to deny suffrage to African Americans. It provided that those who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867, or their lineal descendants, would be exempt from educational, property, or tax requirements for voting. Because the former slaves had not been granted the franchise until the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, those clauses worked effectively to exclude black people from the vote but assured the franchise to many impoverished and illiterate whites." (britannica.com). A lot of white southern leaders saw the disenfranchisement of black people as a good thing and a "means of purifying politics". The 1890s also saw the widespread use of Segregation in the South. Plessy v. Ferguson, the US Supreme Court decision supporting the legality of Jim Crowe laws that permitted or required "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites happened in 1896. In every year from 1883 to 1905, there was more fifty people lynched each year. A vast majority of them obviously being black men. A good amount of these lynchings happened in broad daylight drawing massive crowds. Law enforcement agencies had no interest in preventing lynchings or bringing those who committed the heinous crimes to justice. According to Ida B. Wells, an activist and college educated journalist at the time, "[the] Southern press champions burning men alive". Showing that the press were advocates for such barbarism. Also according to her "the real purpose of these [lynchings] is to teach the Negro that in the South he has no rights that the law will enforce." The lynchings were usually justified by an false accusation of the person having raped a white woman. Between 1889 and 1918 there were 6 states with over 200 lynchings, 4 of those 6 having over 300 lynchings and with Georgia only being 14 shy of 400 lynchings. So I would say the 1880s and 1890s were a pretty horrible time to be black. The worst time no, nothing is worse then pre-Reconstruction era south with slavery. But far from the best.

A good source of information on Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction history is Eric Foner's Give Me Liberty Volume 2: From 1865. It's on the expensive side though, since it pretty much is a college textbook.

As usual, tons of great answers here, but this would worry me a lot. I'd bring it up with the teacher and/or school. Your kid spends more time listening to their teachers than they do listening to you. If their teachers are biased or particularly ignorant, especially about their own subjects this does not bode well for them, you know?

Kind of a follow-up, kind of an ask for more info on the current answers (/u/EverGreatestxX, /u/afro-tastic): the obvious focus here is on the South, but what were things like in the North?