This section covers the sixty years following the United States Civil War, a period of both growth and diminution of rights for African Americans. Topics may include:
Image Source: Alfred R. Waud, “The First Vote,” from Harper’s Weekly, January 5, 1867 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC01733.09)
Topic 3.1–3.6
You will need to understand and be able to use these materials for the AP exam.
Read the three Reconstruction Amendments.
View this depiction of five African Americans elected to Congress.
You can further develop your knowledge of this topic with primary and secondary sources.
Explore Lincoln’s role in the abolition of slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment.
Explore responses by Black Texan women to racial violence in the wake of the Civil War.
These videos from Black History in Two Minutes (or So) feature condensed, engaging, and fact-packed stories.
Learn more about the impact of the Fifteenth Amendment.
Take a closer look at the Fifteenth Amendment's impact.
We have teamed up with New American History on interactive resources exploring America’s past and harnessing the power of digital media, curiosity, and inquiry.
Read a deeply contextualized analysis of the Thirtheenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.
LO 3.2.A
Describe the purpose of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
LO 3.2.B
Explain how after abolition and the Civil War, African Americans strengthened family bonds that had been disrupted by enslavement.
You will need to understand and be able to use these materials for the AP exam.
Read the legislation creating the "bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands" amid the US Civil War.
View this newspaper advertisement placed by a mother who was sold away from her family.
Read the Freedmen’s Bureau’s circular helping to ensure freedpeople's voting rights.
Read a formerly enslaved woman’s plea for information about her lost parents and siblings.
You can further develop your knowledge of this topic with primary and secondary sources.
Read the legislation that extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Understand the roles the Freedmen’s Bureau played in supporting African American families and communities.
View a depiction of Black migration during Reconstruction.
Explore an early phase of Black migration after the Civil War through this map.
These videos from Black History in Two Minutes (or So) feature condensed, engaging, and fact-packed stories.
Take a look at the history and downfall of the Freedman’s Bank in this video.
We have teamed up with New American History on interactive resources exploring America’s past and harnessing the power of digital media, curiosity, and inquiry.
Watch a video about the tradition of family reunions, focused on the descendants of two of the first enslaved Africans from Angola who landed in English North America.
LO 3.3.A
Explain how Black Codes undermined the ability of African Americans to advance after the abolition of slavery.
LO 3.3.B
Explain how new labor practices impeded the ability of African Americans to advance economically after the abolition of slavery.
You will need to understand and be able to use these materials for the AP exam.
View an example of the short-lived promise of “forty acres and a mule.”
Read this order from the Freedmen’s Bureau protecting sharecroppers’ labor rights.
View a photograph of juvenile convict laborers.
View this publicly shared image of a camp of primarily African American prisoners.
These videos from Black History in Two Minutes (or So) feature condensed, engaging, and fact-packed stories.
Convict Leasing
Explore the impacts of Black Codes on African American laborers following the Civil War.
Black Farmers
Black Women Laborers
You will need to understand and be able to use these materials for the AP exam.
Read the opinion of the court leading to the legal doctrine of separate but equal.
You can further develop your knowledge of this topic with primary and secondary sources.
Learn more about Black civil rights following Reconstruction.
These videos from Black History in Two Minutes (or So) feature condensed, engaging, and fact-packed stories.
The Roll Back
Separate but Equal
We have teamed up with New American History on interactive resources exploring America’s past and harnessing the power of digital media, curiosity, and inquiry.
One hundred and twenty five years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, there are still lessons to be gleaned from the case.
You will need to understand and be able to use these materials for the AP exam.
Read an excerpt from Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s analysis of lynchings in the US at the end of the nineteenth century.
View an example of the impact of Jim Crow.
See another example of how Jim Crow discrimination was made manifest in the built environment.
You can further develop your knowledge of this topic with primary and secondary sources.
Analyze a letter written by Frederick Douglass describing his feelings on Black progress.
Learn more about the impact of Homer Plessy on segregation and discrimination of railroad travel.
These videos from Black History in Two Minutes (or So) feature condensed, engaging, and fact-packed stories.
Lynching
Segregated Travel in Jim Crow America
LO 3.6.A
Describe the causes of heightened racial violence in the early twentieth century.
LO 3.6.B
Explain how African Americans responded to white supremacist attacks in the early twentieth century.
You will need to understand and be able to use these materials for the AP exam.
Read Claude McKay’s defiant poem, in response to violence against African Americans following World War I.
Explore the history of racial violence culminating in the Red Summer of 1919.
Unidentified photographer, Photograph of the Greenwood District burning during the Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921 (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
Unidentified photographer, Photograph of detained African American men during the Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921 (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
Unidentified photographer, Photograph of destruction in Greenwood after the Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921 (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
You can further develop your knowledge of this topic with primary and secondary sources.
Learn more about African American service in the war to “make the world safe for democracy,” while also dealing with racism at home.
Take a deep dive into the proliferation of white supremacist violence in the 1910s and 1920s, and responses from Black communities.
These videos from Black History in Two Minutes (or So) feature condensed, engaging, and fact-packed stories.
Tulsa Race Riot
Red Summer
We have teamed up with New American History on interactive resources exploring America’s past and harnessing the power of digital media, curiosity, and inquiry.
Karlos K. Hill investigates the disturbing photographic legacy of the Tulsa massacre and the resilience of Black Wall Street’s residents.