ACTIVITY #1: War, Politics, and Society
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/ahd/warpoliticssociety.html
A) How did the Civil War affect the North and the South?
B) Study the picture on the next website and describe the destruction that you see.
http://www.civil-war.net/cw_images/files/images/397.jpg
ACTIVITY #2: Reconstruction Historical Overview
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/resource_guides/content.cfm?tpc=15
A) How did Northern Republicans use Reconstruction to prevent Southern whites from regaining power after the Civil War?
ACTIVITY #3: Reconstruction Timeline
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/timeline.html
A) Using the timeline, fill in the chart below.
|
DATE |
ACT |
EFFECT |
|
|
13th Amendment
|
|
|
1866 |
Civil Rights Act
|
|
|
|
Reconstruction Act
|
|
|
|
14th Amendment
|
|
|
|
15th Amendment
|
|
|
1875 |
Civil Rights Act
|
|
B) How did white southerners respond to the new freedoms won by African Americans? What specific actions did they take to limit freed blacks’ freedoms?
C) What do you think began to happen once the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?
ACTIVITY #4: The Freedmen
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/timeline/civilwar/freedmen/freedmen.html
A) What were the main responsibilities of the Freedman’s Bureau?
B) Why do you think that education was such an important part of its mission?
ACTIVITY #5: Sharecropping
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=130
A) Why does the author consider sharecropping to have been “a new system of economic exploitation”?
B) In what ways was sharecropping better for African Americans than slavery?