Unit 0 - Reconstruction

A set of vocabulary flashcards defining key terms, amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and figures from the Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction eras.

13th Amendment

Constitutional amendment that officially abolished and prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude across the United States.

14th Amendment

Constitutional amendment granting citizenship rights, equal protection, and due process under the law to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., specifically aiming to protect former slaves.

15th Amendment

Constitutional amendment prohibiting federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude (granting universal male suffrage).

Reconstruction Amendments

The collective name for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments passed following the Civil War to establish rights for newly freed African Americans.

Due Process

The constitutional requirement that the government must respect all legal rights owed to a person, protected under the 14th Amendment.

Radical Reconstruction

The period after the Civil War when Congress took control of Reconstruction, sending federal military forces to the South to enforce civil rights laws and protect former slaves.

Compromise of 1877

An agreement settling the disputed 1876 presidential election, making Rutherford B. Hayes president in exchange for withdrawing federal troops from the South, which officially ended Radical Reconstruction.

Rutherford B. Hayes

The 19th U.S. President whose contested election victory resulted in the Compromise of 1877 and the removal of federal protections in southern states.

Jim Crow Laws

State and local statutes enacted in the South after Reconstruction to enforce racial segregation and restrict African American civil rights.

Lynching

The killing of individuals by a mob without due process, commonly used in the Post-Reconstruction South as a violent tool of intimidation and control.

Poll Taxes

A disenfranchisement method requiring voters to pay a fee before casting a ballot, designed to economically exclude poor African Americans.

Literacy Tests

A disenfranchisement method forcing voters to pass complex reading and writing tests. These tests were used to disenfranchise African American voters.

Grandfather Clauses

A legal loophole allowing individuals to bypass literacy tests and poll taxes if their ancestors had the right to vote before the Civil War, exempting poor or illiterate white voters while excluding African Americans.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Landmark Supreme Court decision that upheld state segregation laws under the legal doctrine of "separate but equal."

Exodusters

African Americans who migrated in large numbers from the South to Western states—primarily Kansas—in 1879 to escape rising racial violence, discrimination, and oppression following Reconstruction.

Benjamin "Pap" Singleton

An activist and former slave who organized and promoted the Exoduster movement, encouraging African Americans to establish independent communities in Kansas.