Notes
The Civil War and emancipation
- Enslaved people freed themselves by fleeing to Union lines ("contrabands"). About 180,000 Black soldiers served in the Union army, including the 54th Massachusetts.
- The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the 13th Amendment (1865) ended slavery.
Reconstruction (1865–1877)
- The 14th Amendment (citizenship and equal protection) and 15th Amendment (voting rights for Black men).
- Freedpeople reunited families, founded churches and schools, and voted. The Freedmen's Bureau helped. Black men held office, including Senator Hiram Revels.
- Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) like Howard and Fisk were founded.
- Most freedpeople didn't get land ("forty acres and a mule" was reversed) and many became sharecroppers, often trapped in debt.
- Violence by the Ku Klux Klan and the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction.
Jim Crow and resistance
- Jim Crow laws enforced segregation; Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld "separate but equal." Poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses took away Black votes. Lynching terrorized communities.
- Ida B. Wells investigated and campaigned against lynching.
- Booker T. Washington urged economic self-help and vocational education; W.E.B. Du Bois demanded full civil and political rights and helped found the NAACP (1909). Du Bois described "double consciousness."
The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance
- Starting around 1910, millions of Black Southerners moved to Northern and Western cities (the Great Migration) for jobs and to escape Jim Crow.
- The Harlem Renaissance (1920s) celebrated Black art and identity: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and jazz musicians like Duke Ellington. Marcus Garvey's movement promoted Black pride and Pan-Africanism.
- Black women's clubs (Mary Church Terrell, the National Association of Colored Women) worked for education and suffrage.
Practice
They made up about 10% of the Union army.
It applied to men at the time.
He represented Mississippi in 1870.
Debt kept families tied to the land.
She published Southern Horrors (1892).
Washington emphasized economic progress first.
It reshaped American cities and culture.
They wrote poetry, novels and folklore.
Free response
Write your answer first, then open the scoring guide.
Free-response question
Answer (a), (b) and (c).
(a) Describe ONE way formerly enslaved people exercised freedom during Reconstruction.
Show the answer and scoring guide
They reunited families, founded independent Black churches and schools, and voted and held office.
Check off the points you earned:
(b) Explain ONE way Southern states limited Black freedom after Reconstruction.
Show the answer and scoring guide
They passed Jim Crow segregation laws and used poll taxes and literacy tests to stop Black men from voting.
Check off the points you earned:
(c) Explain ONE way the Harlem Renaissance expressed Black identity.
Show the answer and scoring guide
Writers like Langston Hughes celebrated Black life and culture in poetry and drew on blues and jazz, expressing pride and challenging stereotypes.
Check off the points you earned: