Reconstruction Begins
This amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States.
What is the 13th Amendment?
In this farming system, a family worked someone else’s land and paid the owner with part of the crop.
What is sharecropping?
These laws passed in 1870–1871 strengthened federal power to protect elections and prosecute political intimidation.
What are the Enforcement Acts?
These Southern Democrats claimed they were “rescuing” their states from Reconstruction governments and restoring local rule.
Who were the Redeemers?
This name describes the system of racial segregation and political exclusion that expanded after Reconstruction.
What is Jim Crow?
This federal agency provided relief, supported schools, helped reunite families, and assisted freedpeople with labor contracts.
What is the Freedmen's Bureau?
These Southern laws attempted to restrict Black labor, movement, political participation, and civil rights after slavery ended.
What are Black Codes?
This White supremacist organization used threats and violence to intimidate Black voters and Reconstruction supporters.
What is the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)?
This insulting Reconstruction-era term referred to Northerners who moved South.
What is a carpetbagger?
This 1896 Supreme Court decision upheld racial segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
This amendment established birthright citizenship, due process, and equal protection under the law.
What is the 14th Amendment?
In this system, farmers borrowed supplies against the value of a future crop, often at high interest.
What is the crop-lien system?
Under the Ku Klux Klan Act, Grant temporarily suspended this legal protection in parts of South Carolina.
What is habeas corpus?
This insulting term referred to White Southerners who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party.
What is a scalawag?
This term meaning “lowest point” is often used for the especially severe period of racial repression around 1890–1920.
What is the Nadir?
This amendment prohibited denying the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
What is the 15th Amendment?
This term describes labor coercion in which debt could prevent a worker from leaving an employer or creditor.
What is debt peonage?
This economic crisis beginning in 1873 helped shift Northern attention away from Reconstruction.
What is the Panic of 1873?
This political settlement associated with the disputed 1876 election led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and is commonly used to mark the end of Reconstruction.
What is the Compromise of 1877/ Corrupt Bargain?
Poll taxes, unfair literacy tests, intimidation, and violence were all used primarily to restrict this Reconstruction right.
What is Black voting / the right to vote?
Special Field Orders, no. 15
Your crop earns $300. You pay $150 in rent, $125 for a loan plus interest, and $30 for a repair. This is your end-of-year balance. What is your balance?
What is $5 Debt?
This corruption scandal involved distillers and government officials conspiring to avoid federal liquor taxes.
What is the Whiskey Ring?
This 1876 Supreme Court case arising from the Colfax Massacre sharply limited federal prosecution under Reconstruction-era civil-rights protections.
What is United States v. Cruikshank?
Churches, schools, businesses, newspapers, and civic organizations are examples of ways Black communities did this during Jim Crow and the Nadir.
What is build community power / persevere and resist?