8.1 - Reconstruction

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Regional tensions following the Civil War complicated efforts to heal the nation and to redefine the status of African Americans.

8.1a
Different approaches toward and policies for Reconstruction highlight the challenges faced in reunifying the nation.
  • Students will compare and contrast the differences between Reconstruction under Lincoln’s plan, Johnson’s plan, and congressional (Radical) Reconstruction.
8.1b Freed African Americans created new lives for themselves in the absence of slavery. Constitutional amendments and federal legislation sought to expand the rights and protect the citizenship of African Americans.
  • Students will examine the Reconstruction amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th) in terms of the rights and protections provided to African Americans.
  • Students will examine the Freedmen’s Bureau’s purpose, successes, and the extent of its success.
  • Students will examine the effects of the sharecropping system on African Americans.
  • Students will examine the reasons for the migration of African Americans to the North.
  • Students will examine the rise of African Americans in government.
8.1c Federal initiatives begun during Reconstruction were challenged on many levels, leading to negative impacts on the lives of African Americans.
  • Students will explore methods used by Southern state governments to affect the lives of African Americans, including the passage of Black Codes, poll taxes, and Jim Crow laws.
  • Students will explore the responses of some Southerners to the increased rights of African Americans, noting the development of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and White Leagues.
  • Students will examine the ways in which the federal government failed to follow up on its promises to freed African Americans.
  • Students will examine the effects of the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling.

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