Unit 4: A Nation Divided

Lesson 6: Reconstruction

EOCT Review Questions

Life in the South

• Sharecropping: a farming system in which a farmer rents land and equipment from a landowner, raises crops, and pays back the landowner with a portion of the crops

• Basically, a sharecropper is a landless farmer

• They were perpetually in debt to the landowner, and to repay that debt, they had to give up most of their crops

• They had little crops left to sell and/or feed their families.

Cycle of Sharecropping

The North Benefits from Reconstruction

• Carpetbagger: Northerners who came to the South to help slaves and make money(get rich)– The South despised them

because they thought they were being used!

• Scalawag: Southerners who cooperated with the African Americans and carpetbaggers

African America Rights in the South• Desire for freedom and community led to

the growth of AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCHES

• 500 freedmen served in State Legislatures during Reconstruction

• Jim Crow Laws: An attempt to control former slaves and segregate the southern society

• Attempts to keep freedmen out of politics:– Poll tax: fee applied to voting – Literacy Tests: test to prove literacy before

freedmen could vote

Ku Klux Klan• Secretive organization that

wore hoods to hide their identity and wanted the white man to be supreme.

• Created to resist giving equal right to African Americans

• Used violence to intimidate freedmen and minorities

(Blacks, Catholics, scalawags, Jews) – Ex. Lynching, burning crosses

• Leader was called “Grand Wizard”

KKK

• Founded by veterans of the Confederate Army

• Federal troops would remain in the South as long as African Americans needed protection, so some people suggested that the KKK step down and stop the harassment.

• Union troops finally withdrew from the South in 1877 due to the Compromise of 1877, ending Reconstruction

Not So Free At Last!After the Civil War ended, freedmen and their families lived lives filled with fear. What would happen if they broke one of the new black codes, new rules set up immediately after the end of the war to restrict the rights of African Americans? What would happen if they tried to buy land or compete with white businesses? Or if they tried to vote? Many in the South seemed intent on revenge. Newly freed blacks were the target.

Not So Free At Last!The Ku Klux Klan, a name that meant “family circle,” was especially cruel. The KKK intimidated African Americans and kept them from enjoying new freedoms. In the dark of night, the KKK would arrive at the home of a black family or a white family considered too sympathetic to black causes. Holding torches aloft, yelling, and shooting guns, men wearing hood and white robes would light a wooden cross in the yard as a warning. A burning cross was merely an omen of worse things to come such as beatings and lynchings.

Not So Free At Last!• The first leader or Grand Wizard of

the KKK was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate hero who quit the KKK shortly after joining because he believed it too violent. In 1871, Congress passed a law stating that federal troops could fire at will against KKK members who were breaking the law. – Harper’s Weekly

Johns Hopkins University

Exit Ticket!

• What did the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments accomplish?

• Despite the “Civil War Amendments,” what were the shortcomings for African American rights in the post-Civil War time period?