Reconstruction, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the Construction of Race

Vocabulary flashcards covering the establishment, leadership, and challenges of the Freedmen's Bureau, along with theoretical perspectives on race as a floating signifier.

The Color Line

Identified by W. E. B. DuBois as the problem of the twentieth century, referring to the relation and separation of the darker and lighter.

The Present Crisis

An 1845 poem by James Russell Lowe paired by W. E. B. DuBois with the spiritual 'My Lord, What a Morning' to establish a dual perspective on the Freedmen's Bureau.

Contraband of War

The status designated by General Ben Butler in Virginia to fleeing enslaved individuals, putting them to work as military laborers.

Edward L. Pierce

A Boston man backed by Secretary Chase who pioneered the Freedmen's Bureau system by taking charge of abandoned lands and refugees around Hilton Head and Port Royal, South Carolina.

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands

An entity established by Congress in March 1865 that functioned as a centralized government within a government to oversee matters regarding emancipated individuals.

General Oliver O. Howard

An honest, deeply religious commissioner sympathetic to freedmen who was appointed by President Andrew Johnson to lead the Freedmen's Bureau.

General Banks

A military leader in Louisiana who oversaw 90,000 black individuals and 50,000 guided laborers, managing payrolls, taxes, grievances, and the first public school system for freedmen.

40 Acres and a Mule

The land allocation that many formerly enslaved people hoped to receive following emancipation, though most never received the promised land.

Fifteenth Amendment

An 1870 constitutional measure that contributed to the expansion of African American civil and voting rights.

Floating Signifier

Stuart Hall's concept stating that racial differences have no fixed or permanent biological meaning and instead function as shifting meanings produced by society.

Discursive Category

A concept defining race as a classification system created through social, historical, and cultural processes rather than fixed biology.

Five Factors of Racial Meaning

The five elements cited in lecture that alter racial meaning over time: events, stories, context, history, and culture.

Mary LeCun

An educator, activist, and African American leader who established a school for black girls in Florida and worked closely with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.