The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history following the American Civil War, dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of abolishing slavery and reintegrating the eleven former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. Despite this, former Confederate states often used poll taxes, literacy tests, and terrorism to discourage or prevent voting and intimidate and control people of color.
The Radical Republicans were a political faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They called themselves "Radicals" because of their goal of immediate, complete, and permanent eradication of slavery in the United States. The Radical faction also included, though, very strong currents of Nativism, anti-Catholicism, and in favor of the Prohibition of alcoholic beverages. These policy goals and the rhetoric in their favor often made it extremely difficult for the Republican Party as a whole to avoid alienating large numbers of American voters from Irish Catholic, German-, and other White ethnic backgrounds. In fact, even German-American Freethinkers and Forty-Eighters who, like Hermann Raster, otherwise sympathized with the Radical Republicans' aims, fought them tooth and nail over prohibition.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to 1872, to direct "provisions, clothing, and fuel... for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children".
The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce White supremacy. Their policy of Redemption was intended to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". They were typically led by White yeomen and dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.
Maggie Lena Walker was an American businesswoman and teacher. In 1903, Walker became both the first African American woman to charter a bank and the first African American woman to serve as a bank president. As a leader, Walker achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for African Americans. Disabled by paralysis and a wheelchair user later in life, Walker also paved the way for people with disabilities.
The John Gilmore Riley House is a historic home in Tallahassee, Florida. It is located at 419 East Jefferson Street. On August 1, 1978, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It is now known as the John G. Riley Center/Museum of African American History and Culture.
This is a selected bibliography of the main scholarly books and articles of Reconstruction, the period after the American Civil War, 1863–1877.
The Cherokee Freedmen controversy was a political and tribal dispute between the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen regarding the issue of tribal membership. The controversy had resulted in several legal proceedings between the two parties from the late 20th century to August 2017.
The Franklin and Armfield Office, which houses the Freedom House Museum, is a historic commercial building in Alexandria, Virginia. Built c. 1810–1820, it was first used as a private residence before being converted to the offices of the largest slave trading firm in the United States, started in 1828 by Isaac Franklin and John Armfield. Another source, using ship manifests in the National Archives, gives the number as "at least 5,000".
A freedman or freedwoman is a person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission, emancipation, or self-purchase. A fugitive slave is a person who escaped enslavement by fleeing.
The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent national memorial was dedicated in 1922.
The Perry Farm is an intact, historic African-American farm complex in Riley Hill, North Carolina, a suburb of Raleigh. The farm house was built in 1820 by John and Nancy Perry, white slaveholders of several slaves during the Antebellum period of the South.
The Charles Sumner School, established in 1872, was one of the earliest schools for African Americans in Washington, D.C. Named for the prominent abolitionist and United States Senator Charles Sumner, the school became the first teachers' college for black citizens in the city and the headquarters of its segregated school system for African American students. It currently houses a small museum, a research room, art exhibits, and the archives of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
The western part of Virginia which became West Virginia was settled in two directions, north to south from Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey and from east to west from eastern Virginia and North Carolina. The earliest arrival of enslaved people was in the counties of the Shenandoah Valley, where prominent Virginia families built houses and plantations. The earliest recorded slave presence was about 1748 in Hampshire County on the estate of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, which included 150 enslaved people. By the early 19th century, slavery had spread to the Ohio River up to the northern panhandle.
The Beaver Dam Plantation, also known as the William Cannon Houston House, is a historic mansion on a Southern plantation in Woodbury, Tennessee, United States.
Warren Clay Coleman was an African-American businessman in south-central North Carolina known as a founder of the Coleman Manufacturing Company, which built one of the first black-owned and operated textile mills in the United States. The Coleman-Franklin-Cannon Mill still stands in Concord, North Carolina, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
William E. Matthews was a lawyer, financier, and civil rights activist in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington DC. He was active in promoting education for freedmen during and after the Civil War. He was very successful as a real estate and financial broker and was an important leader in African American society in the 1860s-1890s.
The Freedman's Bank Building, previously known as the Treasury Annex, is a historic office building located on the corner of Madison Place and Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. It sits on the east side of Lafayette Square, a public park on the north side of the White House, and across from the Treasury Building. The adjoining properties include the Howard T. Markey National Courts Building to the north and the former Riggs National Bank to the east.
William Sugars McLemore (1830–1908) was a circuit judge for Tennessee and a colonel in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
