AA History Test 2

Compromise of 1877

an informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) and Samuel Tilden (Democrat). Southern Democrats allowed Hayes to take office in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction and allowing white Democrats to regain control of Southern state governments, which led to the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans

Plessy V Ferguson

upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine. The 7-1 ruling legitimized Jim Crow laws and established that state-mandated segregation did not violate the 14th amendment equal protection clause.

Poll Tax

were fixed-sum fees required to vote, primarily used in the post-Reconstruction US South to disenfranchise African Americans and poor whites.

14th Amendment

granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including former slaves—and guaranteed equal protection and due process under the law

15th Amendment

prohibits federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"

Sharecropping

a post-Civil War agricultural system where landowners allowed farmers (mostly formerly enslaved Black people and poor whites) to use land and equipment in exchange for a large share of the crop, often 50% or more. It trapped workers in cycles of debt and poverty.

Birth of a Nation

President Woodrow Wilson hosted the first-ever White House film screening for The Birth of a Nation (1915), a landmark but deeply racist film that glorified the Ku Klux Klan and distorted Reconstruction history. Wilson, a Southerner, allegedly praised the film as "writing history with lightning", aligning with his own published views on the era

Booker T Washington

as a preeminent African American educator, orator, and founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University). He advocated for industrial education, economic self-reliance, and racial progress through vocational training rather than immediate political agitation

The Great Migration

the mass movement of approximately six million African Americans out of the rural Southern U.S. to the urban North, Midwest, and West between roughly 1916 and 1970. Driven by the desire to escape Jim Crow segregation, lynching, and economic oppression, migrants sought better industrial jobs and improved social conditions

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is the nation's oldest, largest, and most bold civil rights organization, founded in 1909 to secure political, educational, social, and economic equality for Black people. It fights racial discrimination through lobbying, legal action, and grassroots activism

Ossian Sweet

He is known for being acquitted of murder in 1925 after he and his friends used armed self-defense against a hostile white mob protesting after Sweet moved into their neighborhood. Henry killed the man but in order to keep some sort of peace, all charges were dropped.

Marcus Garvey

He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal N*gro Improvement Association and African Communities League, through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. (Created the Black Star company to help ship AA back to Africa and essentially reclaim their roots. Got in trouble for mail fraud after sending picture of a boat he didn’t own yet called the “Orion”

Boll Weevil

was the most destructive agricultural pest in U.S. history, having spread across the entire Cotton Belt by 1922. The beetle laid eggs in cotton buds, causing immense damage, cutting production by 50% in some states like Georgia. This crisis forced diversification into other crops, such as peanuts, and contributed to the Great Migration of African Americans

Reconstruction is often considered America's unfinished revolution. This assertion stems from the Reconstruction Era promise to bring about the full legal and political equality of those once enslaved. After assessing the important changes in race relations that occurred during Reconstruction, examine the story of Black Americans from that point until the end of the 1920s. Be sure to thoroughly explore how the promise of Reconstruction went unfulfilled in succeeding decades. (Research too)******

Reconstruction (1865–1877) was a transformative, yet ultimately unfulfilled, era that attempted to integrate four million formerly enslaved people into American political and economic life. While it successfully established a constitutional framework for equality—most notably the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments—its failure to protect these rights permitted a violent backlash. By the end of the 1920s, the promise of Reconstruction had been replaced by a system of structural inequality known as Jim Crow, leaving African Americans in a state of second-class citizenship that would not be challenged until the modern Civil Rights Movement.