American History Key Terms: Reconstruction to Progressive Era

Freedmen's Bureau

1865 agency aiding freed slaves' education, labor, and rights during Reconstruction.

Black Codes

Post-Civil War Southern laws restricting African Americans' freedom and labor rights.

Sharecropping

Labor system trapping freedmen in debt through farming land for landowners.

Manifest Destiny

19th-century belief America destined to expand across the North American continent.

Pacific Railway Act

1862 law funding transcontinental railroad construction, linking East and West.

Dawes Severalty Act

1887 law dividing tribal lands, assimilating Native Americans into private ownership.

Grange Laws

1870s Midwestern regulations controlling railroad rates and grain storage fees.

Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's 1889 essay urging wealthy to fund public good.

Herbert Spencer

Social Darwinism advocate; applied 'survival of the fittest' to society.

Omaha Platform

1892 Populist Party program demanding reforms like income tax, direct election.

Streetcar suburbs

Residential areas enabled by streetcars, separating middle-class homes from urban centers.

Plessy v. Ferguson

1896 Supreme Court case upholding 'separate but equal' segregation.

Booker T. Washington

Black leader advocating vocational education and gradual progress for equality.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Civil rights activist promoting higher education, leadership, and immediate equality.

White Man's Burden

Imperialist idea claiming Western duty to civilize nonwhite peoples.

Williams v. Mississippi (1898)

Court upheld poll taxes, literacy tests, disenfranchising Black voters.

Roosevelt Corollary

1904 Monroe Doctrine extension allowing U.S. intervention in Latin America.

Direct primary

Progressive reform letting voters, not party bosses, choose candidates directly.

Settlement house movement

Reformers created urban community centers aiding immigrants, poor, and women.