Amendments
Ratified in 1865 shortly after the end of the Civil War, this constitutional amendment officially abolished slavery throughout the entire United States.
What is the 13th Amendment?
In 1870, this Mississippi minister and politician made history by becoming the very first African American to serve in the United States Senate.
Who is Hiram Revels?
Passed by Southern states immediately after the Civil War, these strict state laws were designed to restrict the freedom of newly freed African Americans.
What are the Black Codes?
What are presidential and radical (congressional) Reconstruction?
This terrorist group intimidated black families to keep them from voting.
What is the KKK?
Ratified in 1870, this amendment declared that the right of citizens to vote could not be denied based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
What is the 15th Amendment?
Before serving five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, this South Carolina leader became a Civil War hero by escaping slavery aboard a Confederate steamboat named the Planter and delivering it to Union forces.
Who is Robert Smalls?
Under many Black Codes, African Americans could be arrested for "vagrancy" and fined or forced into unpaid labor if they could not produce written proof of this.
What is employment (or a job / labor contract)?
This plan called for harsh punishment of the South and guaranteeing rights for freedmen.
What is Radical Reconstruction?
This system of farming developed after the Civil War, where the landowners still kept most of the profits.
What is Sharecropping?
Section 1 of the 13th Amendment banned slavery and involuntary servitude, but it contained a specific loophole clause allowing forced labor under this legal condition.
What is as punishment for a crime (where the party has been duly convicted)?
Born into slavery in South Carolina, he made history in 1870 as the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and later became the first Black person to preside over a House debate.
Who is Joseph Rainey?
Outraged by the creation of Black Codes, Radical Republicans in Congress pushed to ratify this constitutional amendment, which guaranteed citizenship and equal protection under the law to all people born in the U.S.
What is the 14th Amendment?
His lenient "Presidential Reconstruction" policies allowed Southern states to enact Black Codes without federal interference and allowed former Confederate leaders to return to power.
Who is President Johnson?
This series of laws passed slowly after the 14th amendment and restricted the rights of Black Americans in the South until the Civil Rights movement.
What are the Jim Crow Laws?
By granting birthright citizenship to all persons born in the U.S., the 14th Amendment effectively overturned this famous 1857 Supreme Court ruling that declared Black people were not citizens.
What is the Dred Scott decision (or Dred Scott v. Sandford)?
Representing Mississippi, this former enslaved person and successful plantation owner became the first African American senator to serve a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate (1875–1881).
Who is Blanche K. Bruce?
By criminalizing unemployment through vagrancy provisions in the Black Codes, Southern states created this system, where local governments rented out Black prisoners to private plantations, mines, and railroads for forced labor.
What is the convict lease system (or convict leasing)?
These two groups of people in the South likely would have supported Radical Reconstruction plans.
What are scalawags and carpetbaggers?
By this year there were no Black Americans left in Congress, after Reconstruction.
What is 1900?
Section 2 of the 14th Amendment officially repealed the "Three-Fifths Compromise," but added a strict penalty clause: any state that denied voting rights to qualified male citizens would face a proportional reduction in these.
What are seats in the House of Representatives (or Congressional representation / Electoral votes)?
After serving in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War, this politician made history in 1870 by becoming the first African American elected to represent the state of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Who is Josiah Walls?
Designed specifically to strike down the Black Codes, this 1866 law defined all U.S.-born persons as citizens and became the first major federal legislation enacted by overriding a presidential veto.
What is the Civil Rights Act of 1866?
While Abraham Lincoln favored giving voting rights to Black Civil War veterans, Andrew Johnson angered Northern Republicans by granting thousands of these to high-ranking Confederate leaders so they could easily regain political power.
What are presidential pardons?
This is another group that formed shortly after the Civil War to terrorize Black Americans in the South, similar to the KKK.
What is the White League?