The Impact of Reconstruction

13th Hiram R. Revels 

 
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a “The first African American and Native American to 
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have serve in the U.S. Congress when he was elected to the 
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United United States Senate to represent Mississippi in 1870 
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." and 1871 during the Reconstruction era.” 

 
 
14th Freedmen’s Bureau 
 
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States  “Established in 1865 by Congress to help former black 
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of  slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath 
the United States and of the State wherein they  of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65).” 
reside.” 

 
 
Sharecropping 
   
  “A form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a 
15th  tenant to use the land in return for a share of the 
  crops produced on their portion of land.” 
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall   
not be denied or abridged by the United States or by   
any State on account of race, color, or previous   
condition of servitude.”   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
 The Impact of Reconstruction

Union Leagues  Carpetbaggers 

   
“The Union Leagues were a group of men's clubs  “A political candidate who seeks election in an area 
established during the American Civil War  where they have no local connections.” 
(1861-1865), to promote loyalty to the Union of the 
United States of America, the Republican Party, and 
the policies of newly elected 16th President Abraham 
Lincoln (1809-1865, served 1861-1865).” 

 
 
Redeemer Democrats 
 
“A self-imposed term used by nineteenth-century 
 
southern Democrats fond of talking about 
 
"redeeming" their states from the alleged "misrule and 
Black Codes 
corruption." 
 
“were laws passed by Democrat-controlled Southern 
states in 1865 and 1866, and ended in 1877 because 
of the Reconstruction after the Civil War.” 

 
 
Ku Klux Klan 
 
“Three distinct movements in the United States that 
have advocated extremist reactionary positions such 
  as white supremacy, white nationalism, 
  anti-immigration and—especially in later 
Scalawags   iterations—Nordicism, anti-Catholicism and 
  anti-semitism.” 
“A person who behaves badly but in an amusingly   
mischievous rather than harmful way; a rascal.”   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 The Impact of Reconstruction

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871  Slaughterhouse Cases 1873 

   
“An Act of the United States Congress which  “The first United States Supreme Court interpretation 
empowered the President to suspend the writ of  of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment. It 
habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan.”  was a pivotal case in early civil rights law and held 
that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the 
privileges or immunities of citizenship of the United 
States, not privileges and immunities of citizenship of 
a state.” 

 
 
Colfax, Louisiana (1873) 
   
“When approximately 150 black men were murdered   
by white Southern Democrats.”  Civil Rights Act of 1875 
 
“A United States federal law enacted during the 
Reconstruction Era in response to civil rights 
violations to African Americans, ‘to protect all citizens 
in their civil and legal rights." 

 
 
Disenfranchisement  
 
“The state of being deprived of a right or privilege,   
especially the right to vote.”   
  Jim Crow Segregation 
   
  “State and local laws that enforced racial segregation 
  in the Southern United States. Enacted by white 
  Democratic-dominated state legislatures in the late 
  19th century after the Reconstruction period, these 
  laws continued to be enforced until 1965.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Impact of Reconstruction

Plessy V. Ferguson 
 
“A landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court 
issued in 1896. It upheld the constitutionality of racial 
segregation laws for public facilities as long as the 
segregated facilities were equal in quality, a doctrine 
that came to be known as "separate but equal."