Post-Civil War America, 1865-1900

A variety of materials demonstrates the rise and fall of civil rights for African Americans during the latter half of the nineteenth century, including constitutional amendments, sharecropper contracts, and discussions of segregation and voting rights. Other items from this time period document relations with American Indians and the Spanish-American War.

Selected searches in the Collection’s catalog

• John Quincy Adams Ward’s archive of designs, drawings, studies, sketches, and supporting paperwork
• Presidential pardons
• American Indians, 1861–1877
• Reconstruction
• Letters and documents received by Blanche K. Bruce, the first African American to serve a full term in the US Senate
• Letters by Daniel and Nancy Hemans, two Santee Indians who served as missionaries in South Dakota
• Gilded Age
• Materials relating to race relations and Jim Crow
• American Indians, 1877–1900
• Frederick Douglass