American history [arty 2

Freedmen’s Bureau

The federal agency created in 1865 to help formerly enslaved people and poor Southerners with food, education, jobs, and legal assistance during Reconstruction.

13th Amendment

The 1865 amendment that abolished slavery in the United States, except as punishment for a crime.

Radical Republicans

A group of Republicans during Reconstruction who wanted strong protections and political rights for formerly enslaved people and stricter terms for the former Confederate states.

14th Amendment

The 1868 amendment that granted citizenship to people born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed equal protection under the law.

15th Amendment

The 1870 amendment that prohibited the government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

KKK

The Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization formed after the Civil War that used violence and intimidation to oppose Black political and civil rights.

Jim Crow Laws

State and local laws that enforced racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans, especially in the South.

Compromise of 1877

An informal political agreement that resolved the disputed 1876 presidential election and led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, helping end Reconstruction.

Plessy v. Ferguson

A 1896 Supreme Court case that upheld racial segregation under the idea of “separate but equal.”

Booker T. Washington

An African American educator and leader who promoted vocational education, economic advancement, and gradual progress for Black Americans.

W.E.B. Du Bois

An African American scholar and civil rights leader who demanded immediate political and social equality for African Americans and helped found the NAACP.

Exoduster

A Black person who moved from the South to the West, especially Kansas, during the late 1870s to escape racial discrimination and seek better opportunities.

Manifest Destiny

The belief that the United States was destined to expand across the North American continent.

Homestead Act

A 1862 law that gave settlers up to 160 acres of public land if they lived on and improved the land for a set period of time.

Transcontinental Railroad

The railroad completed in 1869 that connected the eastern and western United States, making travel and trade across the country much faster.

Reservation

An area of land set aside by the U.S. government for Native American tribes, often after Native peoples were forced from their traditional lands.

Sitting Bull

A Hunkpapa Lakota leader who resisted U.S. government efforts to take Native American lands and was associated with the victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Battle of Little Bighorn

A 1876 battle in which Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho forces defeated Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and his U.S. Army troops.

Assimilation

The process of encouraging Native Americans to adopt white American culture, language, religion, and customs instead of their traditional ways of life.

Dawes Act

A 1887 law that divided tribal lands into individual plots and encouraged Native Americans to adopt American farming and culture; it caused Native Americans to lose millions of acres of land.

Wounded Knee (1890)

A massacre in South Dakota in 1890 in which U.S. Army soldiers killed many Lakota people, marking a major end to armed Native American resistance on the Great Plains.

Open Range System

A system in which cattle could roam freely over large areas of unfenced grassland, especially on the Great Plains.

Las Gorras Blancas

A Mexican American and Mexican group in New Mexico that protested land loss and the fencing of traditional grazing areas during the 1880s and 1890s.

Billy the Kid

A famous outlaw of the American West who became known for participating in cattle and land conflicts and for being involved in the Lincoln County War.