Group members: Nick, Samuel, Noelle, Eliza - US History



Group members: Nick, Samuel, Noelle, Eliza

History Key Terms study guide （reconstruction）

1)14th Amendment - The Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868. This amendment was first intended to secure the rights of former slaves but has since branched off to include other groups such as senior citizens, women, children, and people with disabilities and is the center of Equality in America.

2) 15th amendment - The 15th Amendment was written to protect the right of citizens to be able to vote, regardless of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Although this article promised a lot for African Americans of the time, states and local polls found loop holes in the legislation to prevent them from voting. De jure segregation continued to oppose African Americans from gaining a strong hold in politics. Poll taxes were used to discourage poor races from voting, along with literacy tests made it difficult. Property qualifications made it a requirement to own property in order to be able to vote.

3) Black codes - In the United States, the most notorious Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

4) Carpetbagger - carpetbagger was a pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners (also referred to as Yankees) who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877.

5) scalawag -  in U.S. history, any Southerner who supported the federal plan of Reconstruction after the Civil War or who joined with the black freedman and the carpetbagger in support of Republican Party policies. The term is pejorative.

6) Civil Rights Act of 1866- in April 9th, 1866, congress passed a law that protected the rights of freed slaves and tried to give equal rights to blacks in the United States. This act announced to give civil rights to citizens, regardless to their race.

7) Civil Rights Act of 1875- granted access of trains, theaters, restaurants, and other public transportation to citizens, regardless of their race.

8) The Freedmen Bureau – was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands created in March 1865 by congress. It was created to give society a “transitional” phase and changing time from white men owning slaves to slaves becoming free men.

9) The Grandfather Clause – was an act that allowed illiterate Whites to vote, but took away the American Black’s right to vote.

10) Ku Klux Klan- is a cult, created by Whites after the civil war to reassert white supremacy after American Blacks were given a substantial amount of rights and power.

11) Literacy Test- in the context of United States political history, refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level.

12) Lynching- murder by mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a specific sector of a population.

13) Plessy v. Ferguson- is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal".

14) Poll tax-is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount applied to an individual in accordance with the census (as opposed to a percentage of income).

15) President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan- To offer pardon and amnesty to participants in the rebellion who pledged loyalty to the Union

16) Reconstruction Act of 1867: the United States Congress passed four statutes known as Reconstruction Acts. An act to provide for the more efficient government of the Rebel States" and it was passed on March 2, 1867. The fulfillments of the requirements of the Acts were necessary for the former Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union.

17) Segregation/Integration: education in the United States was segregated (or even only available) based upon race.

18) Sharecropping/ Tenant Farming: a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on the land.

19) The Compromise of 1877: a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election, pulled federal troops out of state politics in the South, and ended the Reconstruction Era.

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