SS.912.A.2.4

Test your knowledge of the Reconstruction era with this 13-question multiple choice quiz!

Type: Assessment

Students will determine the impact of Jim Crow Laws on the political participation of African American males. 

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will unpack the 14th Amendment and discuss the impact of the Amendment on citizenship and guaranteed freedoms for African Americans. Then students will explore the consequences of the 14th Amendment and the creation of Jim Crow laws. Students will finish their lesson as they review the key facts of the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case and determine their ruling on the case. Students will compare their ruling on the case and Supreme Court’s ruling. This is lesson 2 of 3 in a mini-unit integrating civics and US History.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is lesson 3 of 3 in a mini-unit integrating civics and US History. Students will unpack the 15th Amendment and discuss the impact of the amendment on citizenship and guaranteed freedoms for African Americans. Students will explore the consequences of the 15th Amendment and review connections between the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Students will review their impact on the idea of citizenship in the United States and the Freedoms these amendments guaranteed by completing a project.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will unpack the 13th Amendment and explore the black codes that were implemented because of the amendment. Students will be exposed to the black codes through a “mock simulation” and develop a plan for how the Federal Government should handle the creation of these codes.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will learn how the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments helped to provide freedoms to African Americans and other groups in our country’s history. Students will focus on the 13th amendment during the period of Reconstruction in helping to end slavery. Students will then look at how the 13th amendment did not guarantee citizenship or freedoms to those newly freed slaves and that additional amendments were needed to help provide that. Students will be able to analyze text from the 14th and 15th amendments. Teachers will help guide students in an analysis of the text from the U.S. Constitution and apply it to the historical events during the Reconstruction Era.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be introduced to the practice of segregation through a guided lesson. The guided lesson will include key vocabulary terms necessary for the lesson, the basis of the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, and the establishment of Jim Crow laws. After the lesson, students will complete a guided practice incorporating primary source text taken from the opinion of Plessy v. Ferguson. This is lesson 1 of 3 in a mini-unit integrating civics and U.S. History.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson plan, students will read excerpts from Plessy v. Ferguson [1896], Brown v. Board of Education [1954], and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education [1971] and explain the outcomes of each case using a graphic organizer. Students will receive direct instruction on some historical context and background information of each case to aid in understanding. Students will complete a timeline to illustrate the impact of landmark Supreme Court decisions as it relates to integration and busing. The lesson will conclude with a student analysis of the impact of the Supreme Court cases on integration and busing and how those cases have expanded rights found in the U.S. Constitution 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will use a slideshow and guided notes to learn about the protections guaranteed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.  They will also learn about Southern resistance to those new rights and how they were restored in the 20th century.  Finally, students will  complete a worksheet utilizing primary source texts.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will review key terms and people behind the Constitution. 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will review important legislation and reactions to it during and after Reconstruction, and analyze how both impacted the lives of African Americans.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be able to identify times throughout history when government action helped to expand and protect voting rights and could have led to an increase in voter participation.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson plan, students will research the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States.  Students will explore the significance of these amendments in group settings and in an invidual written reflection.

Type: Lesson Plan

This resource is a lesson plan in which students analyze the 15th Amendment to the Constitution and then learn about the obstacles to actual voting rights that persisted in the post-Reconstruction South (black codes, poll taxes, lynching, etc.). It features a group-based assessment and a follow-up activity in which students create their own political cartoon.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students use the collection's Timeline of African American History, 1852-1925 to identify problems and issues facing African Americans immediately after Reconstruction. Working in small groups on assigned issues, students search the collection for documents that describe the problem and consider opposing points of view, and suggest a remedy for the problem. Students then present the results of their research in a simulated African American Congress, modeled on a congress documented in the collection's special presentation, Progress of a People.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students analyze primary source documents and engage in a Structured Academic Controversy in an effort to answer the central historical question: Were African Americans free during Reconstruction? After an introduction/review of the time period, students answer detailed guiding questions on 4 text documents and a set of photos illustrating the post-Civil War freedoms and restrictions which blacks faced. Students then divide into groups of 4 and into pairs within each group. Each pair presents the argument to the other that blacks were/were not free; only at the end do students abandon their previous positions, reach consensus in writing as a group, and defend that view in a final class discussion.

Type: Lesson Plan

Travel through the southern United States to visit significant areas of the Civil Rights Movement with this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Travel around the state of Alabama to learn about three events during the Civil Rights era: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 16th Street Church bombing, and the March to Selma with this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

In Parts 1 and 2 of this interactive tutorial series, learn about the era of Jim Crow segregation and the larger context within which it flourished, the "Nadir" of American race relations.

CLICK HERE to open Part 1.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

In Parts 1 and 2 of this interactive tutorial series, learn about the era of Jim Crow segregation and the larger context within which it flourished, the "Nadir" of American race relations.

CLICK HERE to open Part 2. 

Type: Original Student Tutorial

In Parts 1 and 2 of this interactive tutorial series, learn what happened after the guns of the Civil War fell silent: the beginning of the Reconstruction era. You'll learn about Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Radical Republicans, and the impeachment of a president!

CLICK HERE to open After the War: Reconstruction Begins, Part 1.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

In Parts 1 and 2 of this interactive tutorial series, learn what happened after the guns of the Civil War fell silent:  the beginning of the Reconstruction era. You'll learn about Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Radical Republicans, and the impeachment of a president!

CLICK HERE to open After the War: Reconstruction Begins, Part 2.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

In this interactive tutorial, learn about the successes and failures of Reconstruction, one of the most controversial periods of American history.  After the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and "Redeemer" resistance, this remarkably progressive period ended after the Election of 1876.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

In this interactive tutorial, learn how and why the Civil War came to an end, and learn what the war's consequences were for Americans in the North and South, as well as future generations.  You'll also learn about the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution and how they form an important legacy of the Civil War.   

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn more about the 1873 landmark Supreme Court decision known as The Slaughterhouse Cases. In this case, the Supreme Court defined the limits of the then-new Fourteenth Amendment and its guarantee of equal "privileges and immunities" to citizens.

Type: Text Resource

Learn about key events in American history from the Reconstruction Era to the start of the Great Depression in this tutorial video provided by Khan Academy. The video touches on the Reconstruction Amendments, Jim Crow laws, the Coinage Act and the Panic of 1873, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and the 18th and 19th Amendments.

Type: Tutorial

Learn about the Black Codes and the era of Reconstruction in this video tutorial provided by Khan Academy.

Type: Tutorial

Learn about the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution in this tutorial video about the American South after the Civil War. This short video is provided by Khan Academy.

Type: Tutorial

Learn about the origins of Jim Crow segregation in the American South after the Civil War, as well as the Compromise of 1877 and the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson in this tutorial video provided by Khan Academy.

Type: Tutorial

This short video provided by Khan Academy features two historians reviewing the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote. The historians also explore ways in which the different Reconstruction Amendments were undermined and not fully realized for almost a century. Helpful graphics illustrate the content.

Type: Tutorial

This short video provided by Khan Academy features two historians reviewing the ratification of the 14th Amendment, which greatly expanded the protection of civil rights to all Americans and granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves recently freed. Helpful graphics illustrate the content.

Type: Tutorial

This short video provided by Khan Academy features 2 historians reviewing the early years of Reconstruction and the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery in the United States. Helpful graphics illustrate the content. Enjoy!

Type: Tutorial

Explore the era of Reconstruction and its aftermath in this webisode from PBS. Learn about the struggles of rebuilding the South and uniting the Union in the years that immediately followed the Civil War, and explore the rise of Jim Crow laws after Reconstruction was abandoned. This webisode provides primary source documents including photographs and excerpts from speeches, a timeline, glossary, and quizzes you can take to test your knowledge.

Type: Tutorial

View a brief, funny video about our 18th President, Ulysses S. Grant, the former general who reunited North and South during Reconstruction!

Type: Tutorial

In this tutorial, you will view a brief video discussing a key Supreme Court decision. The video describes how in 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The Court ruled that while the Fourteenth Amendment protected an individual's rights in places of public accommodation, it would not protect citizens from the discriminatory behavior of individuals. The video also explores how the case led to the Court's first great dissent, its first great dissenter--Justice John Marshall Harlan--and the end of Reconstruction.

Type: Tutorial

In this tutorial video, you will take a whirlwind journey through the period of Reconstruction in American History. As you may know, Reconstruction was a critical time in America of rebuilding and reinventing the South in the years after the Civil War. You'll learn about its successes and failures. Enjoy this "crash course" review!

Type: Tutorial