Westward Expansion & The Frontier
This 1862 law offered free western land to settlers willing to farm it for five years.
Homestead Act
This government policy forced Native children to attend distant schools where they were forced to abandon their culture, dress, and language.
forced assimilation
This term describes the system of state and local laws and customs that enforced racial segregation in the South.
Jim Crow laws
Through her investigative journalism, this courageous activist exposed the horrors of lynching and racial violence in the South.
Ida B. Wells
Adopted in 1868, this Reconstruction amendment guaranteed citizenship and equal protection under the law to all people born or naturalized in the United States.
14th Amendment
Thousands of African Americans who migrated to Kansas after the Civil War to find land and work were known by this name.
Exodusters
The Dawes Act sought to break up tribal lands and divide them into individual plots to promote this process.
assimilation into American society
Jim Crow laws severely affected Black Americans by taking away their legal rights and imposing these broad limitations.
limited rights and freedoms
Booker T. Washington proposed this agreement, suggesting Black Americans temporarily accept segregation in exchange for vocational training and economic opportunity.
Atlanta Compromise
The 15th Amendment granted this critical democratic right to Black American men, though Jim Crow laws later restricted it.
the right to vote
Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that life on the western frontier shaped American culture by promoting these core values.
democratic values and individualism
The Battle of Little Bighorn was triggered when American settlers violated treaties by trespassing into this sacred area to search for gold.
Black Hills
In chronological order, these key steps led to the spread of Jim Crow: Louisiana's Separate Car Act, the arrest of Homer Plessy, and the ruling by this body.
the Supreme Court
Unlike Booker T. Washington, this Civil Rights leader advocated for organizing to demand immediate social and political equality.
W.E.B. Du Bois
Louisiana passed this 1890 law requiring separate seating for Black and white passengers on trains, directly setting up a historic legal challenge.
Separate Car Act
What was the primary motivation behind the concept of the "American Dream" for migrants heading west?
gaining economic success and a better life
This 1890 tragedy in South Dakota marked the end of large-scale armed resistance by Native Americans against the U.S. government.
Wounded Knee Massacre
The landmark ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson legalized racial segregation under this constitutional doctrine.
"separate but equal"
Louisiana's 1898 Constitution introduced literacy rules for voting, which resulted in disenfranchisement and this major systemic issue.
segregation and severe voting restrictions
Devices like the "Grandfather Clause" were added to Southern voting laws specifically to allow poor, illiterate white voters to bypass literacy tests while continuing to deny rights to this group.
Black voters (or Black citizens)
The biggest criticism of Turner’s Frontier Thesis is that it almost completely ignores the experiences of this group of people.
Native Americans
This 1890 tragic event marked the decline of large-scale armed Native American resistance in the West.
Wounded Knee Massacre
Between 1879 and 1920, Louisiana political leaders repeatedly changed the state constitution primarily to achieve this goal.
reversing Black civil rights gains made during Reconstruction
While Booker T. Washington advocated for industrial training, W.E.B. Du Bois argued that Black Americans must demand immediate rights through this method rather than gradual acceptance.
political organizing and direct action for equality
This 1896 Supreme Court decision originated from an intentional challenge to Louisiana's Separate Car Act, establishing legal precedent for racial segregation across the United States for nearly six decades.
Plessy v. Ferguson