Reconstruction and the Color Line: 1865-1920s

45 question-and-answer flashcards covering Reconstruction, Radical legislation, Jim Crow, racial violence, and key Black leadership from 1865 to the 1920s.

What was the primary purpose of the Freedmen’s Bureau created in March 1865?

To provide food, reunite families, and offer legal assistance (especially labor contracts) to formerly enslaved people and poor whites.

Why did Lincoln and Johnson consider granting broad pardons to most Southerners after the Civil War?

To facilitate reconciliation and reintegration of the Southern states into the Union.

Which congressional faction pressed for a more aggressive Reconstruction policy?

The Radical Republicans.

Which amendment redefined U.S. citizenship and guaranteed equal protection under the law?

The 14th Amendment.

In what year was the 14th Amendment ratified?

1868.

What did Section 4 of the 14th Amendment forbid?

Any compensation to former slaveholders for the emancipation of enslaved people.

Which 1867 law placed ex-Confederate states under military rule until they drafted new constitutions?

The Reconstruction Act of March 1867.

What key requirements did the Reconstruction Act impose on Southern constitutions?

Recognition of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and universal male suffrage.

How did Congress respond when President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Reconstruction Act?

It overrode his veto.

Who could serve as delegates at Southern constitutional conventions (1867-1868)?

Both Black and white male citizens elected by universal male suffrage.

Which white-supremacist organization was founded in 1866 to oppose Reconstruction?

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

What action did Congress take against the KKK in April 1871?

Declared it illegal and arrested hundreds of members.

What were Black Codes?

Post-war Southern laws designed to restrict the freedom and mobility of African Americans.

Which act first attempted to grant citizenship rights to Black Americans in 1866?

The Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Which constitutional amendment secured voting rights regardless of race?

The 15th Amendment.

Name two African Americans who served in the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction.

Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce.

What agricultural labor system trapped many freedpeople in debt to white landowners?

Sharecropping.

What unfulfilled promise is summarized as “forty acres and a mule”?

Government land grants and a mule for each formerly enslaved family to ensure self-sufficiency.

What political deal ended federal Reconstruction in 1877?

The Compromise of 1877.

What were Jim Crow laws?

State and local laws enforcing racial segregation in public facilities across the South.

Which 1896 Supreme Court case upheld segregation under “separate but equal”?

Plessy v. Ferguson.

What 1883 Supreme Court ruling struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875?

The Civil Rights Cases (1883).

What was the purpose of the “grandfather clause”?

To disenfranchise Black voters by allowing only men whose ancestors voted before the Civil War to vote.

In what year did the Supreme Court invalidate the grandfather clause?

1915.

How were literacy tests used to limit Black suffrage?

They set reading requirements selectively enforced to bar Black voters while appearing race-neutral.

What was the “one-drop rule”?

A legal principle classifying anyone with any African ancestry as Black.

What violent practice became common in the South to terrorize African Americans after Reconstruction?

Lynching.

What migration beginning in 1910 saw large numbers of African Americans move northward?

The Great Migration.

What was the Red Summer of 1919?

A wave of 25 race riots, including a deadly riot in Chicago.

In what year did the KKK publicly re-emerge in the 20th century?

1915.

Who wrote “Up From Slavery” and promoted vocational training for Black Americans?

Booker T. Washington.

What institution did Booker T. Washington found in 1881 to provide industrial education?

The Tuskegee Institute.

How is Booker T. Washington’s strategy for Black advancement often labeled?

Accommodation—accepting segregation temporarily for economic progress.

Which Harvard-educated activist co-founded the Niagara Movement and later helped found the NAACP?

W. E. B. Du Bois.

What did Du Bois call the invisible racial boundary in American society?

The “Color Line.”

What organization founded in 1909 used legal action to fight segregation and lynching?

The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

Who was Ida B. Wells?

A journalist and leading anti-lynching activist who helped found the NAACP.

For what cause did Mary Church Terrell campaign?

Black women’s suffrage and a federal anti-lynching law.

Which Jamaican-born leader promoted Black pride and a separate Black nation?

Marcus Garvey.

What criticism did radicals like Garvey make of the NAACP?

That it mainly represented the Black upper class and neglected working-class and rural Blacks.

Which 1890 organization united women’s suffrage groups to seek a constitutional amendment?

The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

Why did Black women form their own clubs during the suffrage era?

White-led groups marginalized their concerns about racism and segregation.

List three early priorities of Black women’s clubs.

Education, family well-being, and later political rights/anti-segregation work.

What legal doctrine justified segregation until 1954?

“Separate but equal.”

Which 1954 Supreme Court case began dismantling legal segregation?

Brown v. Board of Education.