3.1 -3.5 Assessment AP African American

3.1 The reconstruction Amendments 

Leanring objectives 

Explain how the Reconstruction Amendments  impacted African Americans by defining standards of citizenship.

Essential Kmowledge to know 

EK 3.1.A.1

During Reconstruction (1865–1877), the

federal government sought to reintegrate the former Confederate states and to establish and protect the rights of free and formerly enslaved African Americans, granting them citizenship, equal rights, and political representation in American government.

EK 3.1.A.2

The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) officially abolished slavery, or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime.

EK 3.1.A.3

The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) defined the principle of birthright citizenship in the United States and granted equal protectionbto all people. It overturned the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) Supreme Court decision and related state-level Black codes.

Leanring objective 

Explain how the Fifteenth Amendment impacted African Americans’ participation in American politics.

Essential knowledge: 

EK 3.1.A.4

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1870) prohibited the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” thereby granting voting rights to Black men.

LO 3.1.B

EK 3.1.B.1

Black men’s access to the right to vote through the Fifteenth Amendment enabled their formal participation in American politics. The participation of thousands of African Americans (many formerly enslaved) in Southern politics was one of the most significant features of the Reconstruction era.

EK 3.1.B.2

During Reconstruction, nearly 2,000 African Americans served in public office from the local level through the United States Senate. Many of the rights gained by African Americans during Reconstruction were blocked during the Jim Crow era. African Americans would fight to reclaim rights in the 1960s that they earned in the 1870s.

Source Notes

§ The engraved portrait from the early 1880s depicts Hiram R. Revels (Mississippi), James

T. Rapier (Alabama), Blanche K. Bruce (Mississippi), Joseph H. Rainey (South Carolina), and

John R. Lynch (Mississippi).

§ In Mississippi, Senator Hiram Revels (of African and Indigenous ancestry) was the first

African American to serve in either house of the United States Congress. Blanche Bruce

(born enslaved) was the first African American elected to serve a full term in the United

States Senate. John Lynch (born enslaved) was elected as the first African American

Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives and was the only African American

in the hundred following years to represent Mississippi in the United States House of

Representatives.

§ In South Carolina, Joseph Rainey (born enslaved) was the first African American to serve in

the House of Representatives and to preside over a debate in the House, and the longest-

serving Black lawmaker in Congress during Reconstruction.

§ In Alabama, James Rapier became the second Black Representative and founded the

state’s first Black-owned newspaper.

3.2 Social life: Reunitng Black Families and the freedmen's Bureau 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.2.A

Describe the purpose of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.2.A.1

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (The Freedmen’s Bureau)

was established by Congress in 1865 and operated until 1872.

EK 3.2.A.2

The Freedmen’s Bureau was responsible for managing property abandoned and confiscated during the Civil War, but its primary function was to assist formerly enslaved people as they transitioned into American citizens. Assistance included providing clothing and food, legalizing marriages, and establishing schools.

Learning Objectives 

Explain how after abolition and the Civil War, African Americans strengthened family bonds that had been disrupted by enslavement.

EK 3.2.B.1

Centuries of enslavement disrupted family bonds among African Americans, as relatives were forcibly sold, relocated, and had their names changed repeatedly by their enslavers. Despite these challenges, African Americans created new kinship bonds and family traditions during and after slavery.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.2.B.2

After emancipation, African Americans searched for kin separated by the domestic slave trade. They relied on newspapers, word of mouth, and help from the Freedmen’s Bureau as they traveled to find lost family and friends.

EK 3.2.B.3

Enslaved African Americans’ marriages were not considered legally binding, though many enslaved people “jumped the broom” as a symbol of their union. After abolition, thousands of formerly enslaved African American men and women sought to consecrate their unions through legal marriage when it became available to them. Many adopted a new name that represented their status as free people and ability to shape their own identities.

EK 3.2.B.4

Many African Americans established a tradition of family reunions, an outgrowth of their postemancipation search to connect with long-lost relatives and friends. Modern family reunions preserve and celebrate Black families’ history, resilience, music, and culinary traditions.

Source Note

§ Founded in 1852, The Christian Recorder, the official newspaper of the African Methodist

Episcopal Church (the first Black denomination in the United States) is the oldest

continuously published African American newspaper in the United States.

Optional Sources

§ Image of Marriage Certificate of Thomas Harris and Jane Harris (Shute), 1866

(National Archives)

§ Image of Marriage Certificate with Tintypes of Augustus L. Johnson and Malinda Murphy,

New York, 1874 (National Archives)

§ Smithsonian Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal

3.3 Black Codes, Lands, and Labor 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.3.A

Explain how Black Codes undermined the ability of African Americans to advance after the abolition of slavery.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.3.A.1

In 1865 and 1866 during Presidential Reconstruction, many state governments enacted Black Codes—restrictive laws that undermined newly gained legal rights of African Americans and controlled their movement and labor. Black Codes aimed to restore the social controls and surveillance of earlier slave codes.

EK 3.3.A.2

Black Codes restricted the advancement of African Americans by limiting property ownership or requiring entry into labor contracts. Many annual labor contracts provided very little pay; some who tried to escape a labor contract were whipped, and those without a labor contract could be fined or imprisoned for vagrancy.

EK 3.3.A.3

One set of Black Codes disrupted African American families by allowing their children to be taken by the state and forced to serve unpaid apprenticeships without their parents’ consent.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.3.B

Explain how new labor practices impeded the ability of African Americans to advance economically after

the abolition of slavery.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.3.B.1

In 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15, 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.

EK 3.3.B.2

President Andrew Johnson revoked Special Field Orders No. 15, and confiscated plantations were returned to their former owners or purchased by northern investors. As a result, African Americans were evicted or shifted into sharecropping contracts.

EK 3.3.B.3

Through sharecropping, landowners provided land and equipment to formerly enslaved people or indigent whites, who were required in exchange to return a large share of the crops to the landowner, making economic advancement very difficult.

EK 3.3.B.4

Through crop liens, farmers who began with little or no cash received food and supplies on credit, borrowing against their future harvest to acquire farming equipment and supplies. Their harvested crops often did not generate enough money to repay the debt, creating avicious cycle of debt accumulation.

EK 3.3.B.5

Through convict leasing, southern prisons profited by hiring out African American men imprisoned for debt, false arrest, or other minor charges to landowners and corporations. Prisoners worked without pay under conditions akin to those of slave labor.

Sources

Land Order for Richard Brown, 1865

Circular No. 8 from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned

Lands, 1866

Juvenile Convicts at Work in the Fields, 1903

Picture Postcard of a North Carolina Convict Camp, Circa 1910

3.4 The Defeat of Reconstruction 

SOURCES

§ Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling, 1896

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.4.A

Explain how Reconstruction-era reforms were dismantled during the late nineteenth century.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.4.A.1

After the election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877, some states began to rewrite their state constitutions to include dejure segregation laws.

EK 3.4.A.2

Black voting was suppressed through measures such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses.

EK 3.4.A.3

African Americans were endangered by acts of racial violence (e.g., lynching) and retaliation from former Confederates, political terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and others who embraced white supremacist doctrine.

EK 3.4.A.4

The Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, upheld a Louisiana law mandating segregated passenger coaches for railroad transportation. This doctrine of “separate but equal” became the legal basis for racial segregation in many facets of American society.

EK 3.4.A.5

In practice, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision legalized separate and unequal resources, facilities, and rights. It would take another Supreme Court ruling with Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, for “separate but equal” to begin to be dismantled.

TOPIC 3.5

Disenfranchisement and Jim Crow Laws

SOURCES

§ Excerpt from Chapter 1 of A Red Record by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1895

§ Segregated Water Fountains (date unknown)

§ Segregated Restrooms, Circa 1960

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.5.A

Explain how the introduction of Jim Crow laws impacted African Americans after Reconstruction.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.5.A.1

The term “Jim Crow” originated in the 1830s as a derogatory term for African Americans. Jim Crow laws were local and state-level statutes passed primarily (but not exclusively) in the South under the protection of the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

EK 3.5.A.2

Jim Crow laws limited African American men’s right to vote and enforced the racial segregation of hospitals, transportation, schools, and cemeteries for Black and white citizens. Jim Crow–era segregation restrictions would not be overturned until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Learning Objectives 

Describe the responses of African American writers and activists to racism and anti-

Black violence during the nadir.

EK 3.5.B.1

African American Studies scholars refer to the period between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Second World War as the “nadir,” or lowest point of American race relations. This period included some of the most flagrant public acts of racism (including lynching and mob violence) in United States history.

EK 3.5.B.2

African American journalists and writers of the era highlighted the racism at the core of Southern lynch laws that sought to justify the rampant, unjust killing of Black people.

EK 3.5.B.3

African American activists responded to attacks on their freedom with resistance strategies, such as trolley boycotts. Activists relied on sympathetic writers in the press to publicize mistreatment and murder of African Americans.

Sources

Segregated Water Fountains (date unknown)

Segregated Restrooms, Circa 1960

Source Notes

§ The term “Jim Crow” originated in the 1830s. Thomas Dartmouth (T.D.) Rice, a white stage

performer, donned blackface makeup and performed an act called “Jump, Jim Crow”

wherein he caricatured African Americans in speech and dance. The popularity of Rice’s

performance and stereotypes led to “Jim Crow” becoming a common, derogatory term

for African Americans.

§ Rayford W. Logan, a Pan-Africanist and historian of the post-Reconstruction period,

named this period “the nadir.”

§ Born into slavery, Ida B. Wells-Barnett became a journalist, civil rights advocate, and

feminist active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her writings

described how lynching aimed to terrorize African Americans from seeking any form of

advancement. Wells proposed that every African American own a Winchester to protect

themselves in light of the increase in anti-Black violence following Reconstruction.

• Ida B. Wells: A prominent journalist and activist who advocated for civil rights and women's suffrage, emphasizing the need for self-defense in the face of systemic racism. Wells argued that armed self-defense was not only a means of protection but also a powerful statement against the oppression and violence faced by the Black community.

§ Rayford W. Logan, a Pan-Africanist and historian of the post-Reconstruction period,

named this period “the nadir.”

§ Born into slavery, Ida B. Wells-Barnett became a journalist, civil rights advocate, and

feminist active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her writings

described how lynching aimed to terrorize African Americans from seeking any form of

advancement. Wells proposed that every African American own a Winchester to protect

themselves in light of the increase in anti-Black violence following Reconstruction.