Frontier, Reconstruction, and the New South - Vocabulary Flashcards

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering key people, events, acts, and concepts from Reconstruction, westward expansion, and early 20th-century racial politics.

Strange Fruit

A protest song popularized by Billie Holiday about lynching in the American South, highlighting racial terror (contextual reference to the post-Reconstruction era).

Reconstruction (1865–1877)

Federal effort to rebuild the South and guarantee rights for newly freed Black Americans; rights protected initially, then rolled back after 1877.

15th Amendment (1870)

Constitutional amendment prohibiting denial of the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude; enforcement eroded by later Jim Crow laws.

Jim Crow

System of racial segregation and disenfranchisement in the Southern United States from the late 19th into the mid-20th century.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

White supremacist terrorist organization that used violence and propaganda to oppress Black people; experienced a revival in the early 20th century.

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Silent film that portrayed the KKK as heroic and popularized white-supremacist propaganda, aiding the resurgence of the Klan.

Frederick Jackson Turner

Historian who proposed the Frontier Thesis, arguing American identity was forged on the western frontier through settlement and interaction with the wilderness.

Frontier Thesis

Turner’s idea that the western frontier defined American democracy and character as it moved westward.

Homestead Act (1862)

Legislation that granted 160 acres of public land to settlers who improved and inhabited the land, promoting western expansion.

Exodusters

Black Americans who migrated from the South to Kansas and other western territories after Reconstruction seeking safety and opportunity.

Transcontinental Railroad

Railroad completed in 1869 linking the East and West coasts, accelerating settlement and economic development.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Federal law that severely restricted Chinese immigration and naturalization—the first major U.S. immigration restriction law.

19th Amendment (1920)

Constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote nationwide; adoption was fastest in the Western states due to various factors including population.

Second Industrial Revolution

Period of rapid industrial growth in the late 19th century in the U.S., with advances in steel, railroads, oil, and manufacturing supporting westward expansion.

Lynching

Extrajudicial killings by mobs, often racially motivated, carried out without due process and used as a tool of terror during the Jim Crow era.