Unit 3 (P1) Vocab

Reconstruction

The historic period in the United States, following the Civil War, that was about rebuilding the nation and addressing the issue of how to integrate millions of newly freed people into American society.

Reconstruction Amendments

What the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were known as, because they were the first enacted right after the Civil War and because all addressed questions related to the legal and political status of African Americans.

Citizenship

The status of being a recognized citizen of a particular country.

15th Amendment (1870)

Prohibited voting restrictions based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude (slavery)

Freedmen's Bureau

Government organization established in 1865 by Congress to help millions of former enslaved peoples and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. This organization provided food, housing and medical aid, established schools and offered legal assistance.

Christian Recorder

Founded in 1852, the official newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (the first Black denomination in the U.S.), is the oldest continuously published African American newspaper in the U.S.

Black Codes

Restrictive laws that undermined the newly gained legal rights of African Americans and controlled their movement and labor.

Special Order No. 15

Order issued by Union General William T. Sherman, which aimed to redistribute about 400,000 acres of land between South Carolina and Florida to newly freed African American families in segments of 40 acres.

Presidential Reconstruction

The plan, created by the leader of the nation, to reunite and rebuild the country.

Vagrancy

the state of wandering from place to place

Sharecropping

A system involving farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.

Crop Lien

A form of credit repaid in crops rather than money

Convict Leasing

A system devised under the loophole of the 13th amendment, which allowed Southern prisons to profit by hiring out African American men imprisoned for debt, false arrest, or other minor charges to landowners and corporations.

Compromise of 1877

Deal that settled the 1876 presidential election contest between Rutherford Hayes (Rep) & Samuel Tilden (Dem.); Hayes was awarded presidency in exchange for the permanent removal of fed. troops from the South, ultimately ended Reconstruction.

De jure segregation

Separation that was mandated by law and enforced by the government.

Poll tax

A fee created specifically to prevent people from exercising their right to vote.

Literacy tests

Assessments that "measured" a person's literacy skills, oftentimes administered by governments to Black people and immigrants to deter them from voting.

Grandfather Clause

Laws passed that determined the eligibility of voters based off of whether their ancestors had previously voted.

Lynching

Extralegal public killing of an individual who has not received any due process.

Ku Klux Klan

The oldest and most infamous of American white supremacist, hate groups, that has historically utilized violence and terror to send a message.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

1896 court case that led to the doctrine of "separate but equal" became the legal basis for racial segregation in American society.

Jim Crow

Laws implemented after the U.S. Civil War to legally enforce segregation, particularly in the South, after the end of slavery.

Nadir

Term that described the lowest point of American race relations.

Rayford W. Logan

Pan-Africanist and historian of the post-Reconstruction period, who came up with term "Nadir."

Ida B. Wells

A journalist, anti-lynching advocate, civil rights advocate, and feminist active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Red Summer

An outbreak of racial violence that occurred during the summer of 1919, that affected at least 26 cities across the United States.

James Weldon Johnson

NAACP leader and Harlem Renaissance writer; he wrote poetry and, with his brother, the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

hate crime

A crime, typically one involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds.

Race Riots

a public outbreak of violence between two racial groups in a community.

Tulsa Massacre

Massacre that destroyed more than 1,250 homes and businesses in Greenwood, Oklahoma.

Black Wall Street

One of the most affluent African American communities in the U.S., specifically Oklahoma, during the Jim Crow era.

Claude McKay

A key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, who encouraged African Americans, through his literature, to preserve their dignity and fight back against anti-Black violence and discrimination. He also wrote the poem "If We Must Die"

W.E.B. DuBois

Civil Rights activist, known for being the first Black man to graduate from Harvard, who established himself as one of the leading thinkers on race and the plight of Black Americans, argued for full political rights immediately after reconstruction.

color line

The division of black society and white society into two different and unequal worlds

double consciousness

The internal conflict, that resulted from social alienation created through racism and discrimination, experienced by subordinated groups in an oppressive society.

Racial Uplift

Term utilized within the African American community that motivates educated Blacks to be responsible for the social advancement of their race.

Booker T. Washington

Civil Rights activist, born into slavery, that advocated for industrial education and training as a means of economic advancement and independence in society.

Nannie Helen Burroughs

A suffragist, religious leader, educator, and social activist in the early 20th century.

Anna Julia Cooper

This African American scholar was known for covering issues of race and gender in the America south in the late 1800s. She also argued men should not fear women attaining more education.

National Association of Colored Women

An organization created in 1896 by African American women to provide community support. Through its local clubs, the NACW arranged for the care of orphans, founded homes for the elderly, advocated temperance, and undertook public health campaigns.