A positive legacy that can be connected to Reconstruction is the history that it left behind.
A negative impact, I would say, is probably how late we were to change.
Explanation:
We know that there was so much destruction in the South that it took forever to fix the landscape, and even then, people were still in poverty. The South was very poor. We also know that secession is simply not a thing that we can just do. States' rights is important, but we need to realize how to balance that with federalism. The government shouldn't hold all of the power, especially not today with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the riots. The people will always see the nation at eye-level, meaning that they don't have the comforts that the rich and in-charge do. They see the gritty reality, because we're just that. We're just people. History has shown us so much.
Even today, people don't really see others as equals. Black people are struggling so hard because the white people didn't really understand that they're the same. We still struggle with racism, we still struggle with inequality. Compared to a white man, a black man is always going to have a harder time. He'll be in jail longer, he'll be racially profiled, and for what? For the color of his skin, which he can't help at all. It's extremely unfair, and the fact that even today, people are still holding those anti-colored ideals, shows how little we've come.
These were just off the top of my head, I'm sorry if they're not what you wanted. I racked my brain, but this is kind of a hard question. If I were you, I would look into the economic impacts, for example, how the south was poor and the north was not. I would connect that to today's economics, and see if they're the same. If not, list the reasons why. It really wasn't that long ago.
