Struggle for Freedom: Reconstruction Era

A special thank you to Terry Clark, Director of Social Studies and Computers, Bethpage School District for creating this section.

We know the New York State curriculum for Grade 8 begins with the era of Reconstruction. Freedom for the former slaves was in no way assured and the struggle for civil rights continued throughout this time period. Our hope was to provide you with a list of Web sites from which you could explore the theme of Freedom with your students. Many of these sites provide the kind of primary documents to be seen on the new 8^th Grade Social Studies assessment (planned for June, 2001). If you have not seen it, check out the worksheets provided by the National Archives (http://www.nara.gov/education/
teaching/analysis/analysis.html) for student analysis of primary documents. They can be quite helpful for focusing students on the importance of documents.

Reconstruction Web Sites:

African American Odyssey
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/
aaohtml/exhibit/aopart5.html
African American Odyssey: An excellent collection of primary sources, sketches, broadsides and photos of the African American experience. It covers the entire scope of American history, including several pages of documents relating to the era of Reconstruction.

Jim Crow Laws
http://www.nps.gov/malu/
documents/jim_crow_laws.htm
A sampling of Jim Crow laws that were enforced in various Southern states. The site is maintained by the National Parks Service as part of their Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Site.

Plessy v. Ferguson
http://www.civnet.org/resoures/
teach/basic/part6/33.htm
Excerpts from the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision. This infamous decision ruled in favor of segregation so long as facilities were "separate but equal."

The Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/
ftrials/impeach/impeachmt.htm
This site contains extensive links regarding the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. This Constitutional drama pitted the Radical Republicans against the Democratic President. Links are to photos, cartoons and other documents related to the first impeachment of an American president. Ths site is part of a collection regarding famous trials in American history.

Freedmen, The Freed Slaves of the Civil War
http://www.civilwarhome.com/freedmen.htm
A history of the Freedmen’s Bureau is a site explaining the goals of the one government agency set up to help the newly freed slaves. It reviews the success and shortfalls of the agency.

Ku Klux Klan Report
http://www.unf.edu/dept/
equalop/oeop11.htm
A Hundred Years of Terror is a history of the Ku Klux Klan in America, a group actively devoted to denying African-Americans their hard-won Constitutional right to vote. It is a report of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Frederick Douglass
http://www.nps.gov/frdo/fdlife.htm
The National Parks Service’s site devoted to Fredrick Douglass with links to documents and other sites/projects.

American History Online
http://longman.awl.com/
history/primarysources_16.htm
Longman’s American History Online is a publisher’s Web site designed to supplement a series of textbooks. Included on this page are a number of interesting primary documents related to Reconstruction including: Mississippi Black Code (1865) , A Sharecrop Contract (1882), The Fourteenth Amendment (1868), The Victims of the Ku Klux Klan (1935)