Post-Slavery
(Left to right) Black lawmakers elected to Congress after slavery, a Black man's first time voting, "contrabands" or formerly enslaved people who escaped to freedom
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Reconstruction: America After The Civil War
By: Public Broadcasting System A documentary series from historian Henry Louis Gates. The twelve years that composed the post-war Reconstruction era (1865-77) witnessed a seismic shift in the meaning and makeup of our democracy, with millions of former enslaved people and free Black people seeking out their rightful place as equal citizens under the law. Though tragically short-lived, this bold democratic experiment was, in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, a ‘brief moment in the sun’ for African Americans, when they could advance, and achieve, education, exercise their right to vote, and run for and win public office. |
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Reconstruction in America:
Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876 By: Equal Justice Initiative In 1865, after two and a half centuries of brutal enslavement, Black Americans had great hope that emancipation would finally mean real freedom and opportunity. Black leaders overcame enormous obstacles to win elections to public office. However, it quickly became clear that emancipation in the U.S. did not mean equality for Black people. Violence and mass lynchings enabled white Southerners to create a regime of white supremacy. |
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The Era of Reconstruction: 1861-1900
By: National Park Service Slavery began to end when enslaved Black people escaped from farms and plantations and sought refute with Union soldiers. As slavery ended, the U.S. was faced with several questions—what kind of labor system would replace slavery, would slave states be allowed to rejoin the United States, was the U.S. government obligated to protect slave owners or freed slaves? |
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Beloved
By: Toni Morrison In this novel, Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. |
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The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
Tour the Jim Crow Museum with founder and curator, Dr. David Pilgrim. Jim Crow was not just a character or a set of “laws,” it was a system that built upon itself to create and sustain a society with a racial hierarchy. |
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How the Watermelon Stereotype Came to be Used Against African Americans
By: Angelica Cheyenne For centuries, watermelon has been used alongside negative imagery of Black Americans. Watermelon was first seen as a demeaning symbol in the 19th century when freed Black Americans became merchants and sold the fruit. |
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Ethnic Notions – Part 1
Directed by: Marlon Riggs This 1986 documentary traces the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice in America. Part 1 is starting in the early 1830s, beginning with the Jim Crow entertainment era, and concludes in the early 1900s, when these deep rooted stereotypes really made a foothold in white America's societal norms. |
Watch on YouTube
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Atlanta’s Washerwoman Strike
By: AFL-CIO In July 1881, 20 laundresses met to form a trade organization, the Washing Society. They sought higher pay, respect and autonomy over their work and established a uniform rate at $1 per dozen pounds of wash. With the help of black ministers throughout the city, they held a mass meeting and called a strike to achieve higher pay at the uniform rate. In three weeks, the Washing Society grew from 20 to 3,000 strikers. |
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“I Claim the Rights of a Man”
By: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner Bishop Henry McNeal Turner emerged immediately after the Civil War as one of the most ardent defenders of African American rights. Turner was also among the first group of Reconstruction-era African American elected officials. Less than two months later, Georgia Democrats, the majority of the legislature, boldly expelled all of the black members. On September 3, 1868, Turner stood before the assembled representatives and denounced the legislators who had refused to seat the African American senators and representatives. This si the text of his speech |
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Crusade for Justice
By: Ida B. Wells Born during the final years of slavery, Ida B. Wells tells the details of her work as an anti-lynching activist and journalist, while navigating the challenges of motherhood. |
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Black Reconstruction
By: W.E.B. DuBois An essay on Black people’s role in reconstructing democracy after slavery, from 1860 to 1880. |
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How Winslow Homer Paintings Captured the Complex Social and Political Issues of His Era
By: Eli Anapur After returning to Virginia, Homer observed the changes and the devastation the war left behind, especially among Black communities. Black women and children became the focus of Homer in this period. After the loss of Black men to the war, women became central to the reconstruction of Black life. |
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The Souls of Black Folks
By: W.E.B. DuBois In this book, originally published in 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois has collected fourteen of his own essays about life after the Civil War, especially in the South. While the book predominantly deals with Black society and the life of “freedmen,” it also discusses how white society evolved after Emancipation. Throughout the text, Du Bois presents specific examples of racial injustice and inequality in the South. |
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Up From Slavery
By: Booker T. Washington Born a slave in Virginia, he was later educated at the Hampton Institute and went on to establish and head the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. This autobiography is a simple yet dramatic record of Washington’s dedication to the education of black Americans. |
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Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887. He became a leader of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, which sought to give black people freedom and political power. Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He promoted Pan-African ideas which inspired a global movement, known as Garveyism. Garveyism would eventually inspire others, from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement. |
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Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey
Edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey Essays and speeches by Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and a Jamaican immigrant to the United States. Founded in 1914, UNIA promoted Black pride, racial unity among Black people, and redeeming Africa from white rule. |
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Aims and Objects of Movement for Solution of Negro Problem
By: Marcus Garvey The Universal Negro Improvement Association is an organization among Negroes that is seeking to improve the condition of the race, with the view of establishing a nation in Africa where Negroes will be given the opportunity to develop by themselves, without creating the hatred and animosity that now exist in countries of the white race through Negroes rivaling them for the highest and best positions in government, politics, society and industry. |
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