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B-2 LESSONS OF RECONSTRUCTION (MUST-DO)

Last updated over 3 years ago
15 questions
The following excerpts are from the 2019 Time Magazine article "How Reconstruction Still Shapes American Racism" by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Link: https://time.com/5562869/reconstruction-history/
During an interview with Chris Rock for my PBS series ­African American Lives 2, we traced the ancestry of several well-known African Americans. When I told Rock that his great-great-­grandfather Julius Caesar Tingman had served in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War — enrolling on March 7, 1865, a little more than a month after the Confederates evacuated from Charleston, S.C. — he was brought to tears. I explained that seven years later, while still a young man in his mid-20s, this same ancestor was elected to the South Carolina house of representatives as part of that state’s Reconstruction government. Rock was flabbergasted, his pride in his ancestor rivaled only by gratitude that Julius’ story had been revealed at last. “It’s sad that all this stuff was kind of buried and that I went through a whole childhood and most of my adulthood not knowing,” Rock said. “How in the world could I not know this?” I realized then that even descendants of black heroes of Reconstruction had lost the memory of their ancestors’ heroic achievements.
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What important roles did Chris Rock's great-great-grandfather play in the 1860s?

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The author uses Chris Rock's story as an example to help prove that

Reconstruction, the period in American history that followed the Civil War, was an era filled with great hope and expectations, but it proved far too short to ensure a successful transition from bondage to free labor for the almost 4 million black human beings who’d been born into slavery in the U.S. During Reconstruction, the U.S. government maintained an active presence in the former Confederate states to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves and to help them, however incompletely, on the path to becoming full citizens.
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Reconstruction was an era filled with great _______ and expectations, but it proved _______ to ensure a successful transition from bondage to free labor.
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One of the goals of Reconstruction was to help the 4 million former slaves transition from slavery to a situation where they could get paid for their work and get all the rights of citizenship.

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How did the U.S. government try to make sure that black Americans would get all of their rights during Reconstruction?

Reconstruction was fundamentally about who got to be an American citizen. It was in that period that the Constitution was amended to establish birthright citizenship through the 14th Amendment, which also guaranteed equality before the law regardless of race. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, barred racial discrimination in voting, thus securing the ballot for black men nationwide. As Eric Foner, the leading historian of the era, puts it, “The issues central to Reconstruction —­ citizenship, voting rights, terrorist violence, the relationship between economic and political democracy ­— continue to roil our society and ­politics today, making an understanding of Reconstruction even more vital.” A key lesson of Reconstruction, and of its violent, racist rollback, is, Foner continues, “that achievements thought permanent can be overturned and rights can never be taken for granted.” Another lesson this era of our history teaches us is that, even when stripped of their rights by courts, legislatures and revised state constitutions, African Americans never surrendered to white supremacy. Resistance, too, is their legacy.
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Reconstruction was fundamentally about _______ .
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What two rights were guaranteed under the 14th Amenmdent (one of the three Reconstruction Amendments)?

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The 15th Amendment barred _______ in voting.
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The 15th Amendment gave black men and women the right to vote.

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List four of the central issues of the Reconstruction period.

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All of the issues that existed during Reconstruction have been fixed by now.

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According to historian Eric Foner, what are the two key lessons of Reconstruction?

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According to historian Eric Foner, what is one of the legacies of African Americans during the Reconstruction era?

As a worried ­Frederick Douglass, sensing the storm clouds gathering on the horizon, put it in a speech at the Republican National Convention on June 14, 1876: “You say you have emancipated us. You have; and I thank you for it. You say you have enfranchised us; and I thank you for it. But what is your ­emancipation? — What is your enfranchisement? What does it all amount to if the black man, after having been made free by the letter of your law, is unable to exercise that freedom, and, after having been freed from the slaveholder’s lash, he is to be subject to the slaveholder’s shotgun?”
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Frederick Douglass wrote this 1876 speech simply to thank white Americans for making sure that slavery was abolished and allowing black Americans to have all the same freedoms as white Americans.

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What was the main point that Frederick Douglass was trying to make in this speech?