During Reconstruction, three new amendments to the Constitution redefined freedom, citizenship, and democracy in the United States. But how much really changed? In this video, Kim examines continuity and change over time in the lives of African Americans in the South before and after Reconstruction.

In this activity students consider different viewpoints on whether former slaves should be given land at the end of the Civil War. Students read one of five primary sources and summarize the author's viewpoint. This activity makes a good introduction to a unit on Reconstruction or to sum up a unit on the Civil War. This activity was designed to help students with language processing challenges synthesize historical documents.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Many factors influence recovery from surgical ACL reconstruction, and defining these is key to achieving the best outcomes. While the elements linked to surgical success in adult populations are well defined, they aren’t so clear for younger patients. New research from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York suggests that for these patients, age matters when it comes to protecting the knee. That conclusion stems from an evaluation of 324 athletes under 20 years of age who underwent ACL reconstruction following a sports injury. A key consideration when operating on this group is minimizing the risk of growth disturbances. Children and young adolescents haven’t reached skeletal maturity, which has led to the development of age-specific surgical techniques. Researchers compared several of these approaches among groups divided based on skeletal age, school age distribution, surgical technique, and graft selection. Clinical follow-up was performed for at least 2 years..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the history, successes, and failures of the Freedmen's Bureau during Reconstruction. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

The “Own It!” Handbook for Adults & Teens is a step-by-step guide to a fourteen topic after-school program, such as a Boys & Girls Club, or an adult Community Building group. For adults, it seeks to bridge divides and  explore what Americans have in common. For teens, it is a transformative after-school, trauma-informed enrichment program. It nurtures academic skills, personal growth and leadership. For all, it uses history to connect our past to our future, as part of the Own Your History® (OYH) Collection. Our inheritances from family history and the American experience provide the starting point for our personal journeys.  Our individual stories are part of a complex American history. We each can choose consciously to write our life story and work for a greater future. Own It! is not “school” but enhances students’ engagement in being creative, making things happen, and  achieving goals. Its mission is to help them step up and enrich their lives, especially by understanding that they live in history.

This textbook examines U.S. History from before European Contact through Reconstruction, while focusing on the people and their history. Prior to its publication, History in the Making underwent a rigorous double blind peer review, a process that involved over thirty scholars who reviewed the materially carefully, objectively, and candidly in order to ensure not only its scholarly integrity but also its high standard of quality. This book provides a strong emphasis on critical thinking about US History by providing several key features in each chapter. Learning Objectives at the beginning of each chapter help students to understand what they will learn in each chapter. Before You Move On sections at the end of each main section are designed to encourage students to reflect on important concepts and test their knowledge as they read. In addition, each chapter includes Critical Thinking Exercises that ask the student to deeply explore chapter content, Key Terms, and a Chronology of events.

This lesson recounts efforts to improve homesteading laws and make land ownership possible for more settlers. The distribution of government lands had been an issue since the Revolutionary War. Preemption -- settling the land first and paying for it later -- became national policy; however, supporting legislation was stymied until the secession of Southern states. See one of the first applications for land under this law. Teaching activities are included.

This is a project focusing on Reconstruction-era Federal expansion. The final product is a structured group debate.

AMH 2091 is an introductory-level survey course that provides an overview of the major events and developments in African American history, from Africa to the present. At its core, the history of African Americans has been connected to attempts to gain freedom. Starting with the West African empires, the course traces African Americans’ quest for freedom through the Slave Trade, Slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Era, World War I, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and World War II. It then examines key political, social, and cultural developments of the post-war period focusing on social movements such as the Long Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, and Women’s Rights Movement. There will be an emphasis on learning the basic chronology and topics of African-American history, analyzing a range of primary and secondary sources, and practicing writing interpretive essays, using primary and secondary sources to support a clear argument.  Students can expect to dedicate 4 – 5 hours a week to writing. 

The students will analyze the rise of violent activities against African Americans after the Civil War which lead to the addition of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Begin with a KWL Jamboard (also attached, in a PDF format) which also includes an activity in analyzing primary resources about lynching.  Students will then develop their own 5-day trip itinerary using the Negro Green Book (see the list of free PDF versions for various years) as a travel reference guide. The objective of the lesson is to have the students understand the perils faced by US citizens of color during the Jim Crow Era and how prevalent the dangers were in some areas of the United States at that time. The teacher may wish to use a formative assessment in the form of an exit ticket (see attached). 

This lesson focuses on the shift toward mass production in northern factories and on southern plantations that occurred during the first half of the 19th century. Using an economics-focused approach to examining U.S. history prior to the civil war, students examine the role of slavery, industrialization, regionalism, and political responses that ultimately led to the start of a war.

This lesson covers two essential aspects of Reconstruction: the condition of the southern states at the close of the war and Lincoln's plan for restoring them to the Union. In examining the conditions of the southern states, students consider both the physical conditions (i.e., the impact of the devastation of war) and the political condition of these states (i.e., what was the proper relationship between southern states and the Union upon their surrender at Appomattox?)

In this lesson, students examine the development of new constitutions in the reconstructed South. They also consider the political and social realities created by a dramatically changed electorate. In gaining a firmer grasp of the causes for the shifting alliances of this time, students see how far-reaching the consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction era were and how much these events continue to shape our collective destiny today.

Using a comparative analysis of two sets of laws (one pre-emancipation and one post-emancipation), this lesson provides students an opportunity to better understand how the meaning and boundaries of American freedom have been contested ground throughout history, and how laws were once used to promote white supremacy and restrict black mobility.

This lecture by Brian Mitchell (Director of Research and Interpretation, Abraham Lincoln Museum) discusses Oscar James Dunn, Louisiana’s first Black Lieutenant Governor. It discusses Dunn's life, political career, and legacy, highlighting his significant contributions during the Reconstruction era. Mitchell details Dunn's journey from enslavement to freedom, his education, and his early career as a music teacher and labor contract negotiator, and explains how Dunn became involved in politics, his appointment as Assistant Board of Aldermen, and his historic election as Lieutenant Governor. Mitchell also describes Dunn's role in the political battle over the Civil Rights Bill and his rivalry with Louisiana Governor Henry Clay Warmoth. Mitchell closes by describing the circumstances surrounding Dunn's sudden death and the widespread speculation of poisoning. He highlights the grand scale of Dunn's funeral, attended by thousands of mourners. In closing, Mitchell explores the deliberate efforts to erase Dunn's accomplishments from history after Reconstruction. In sum, this lecture provides a comprehensive overview of Oscar James Dunn's life and legacy, shedding light on a significant but often overlooked figure in American history. It also highlights the importance of historical research and the power of individual stories to challenge dominant narratives and reclaim forgotten legacies.

This lecture is distributed by An Open Classroom on New Orleans Culture. It was created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Google Education, New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, the Department of Mass Communication at Xavier University of Louisiana, and the Division of Undergraduate Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

This course is a detailed examination of the grammar of Japanese and its structure which is significantly different from English, with special emphasis on problems of interest in the study of linguistic universals. Data from a broad group of languages is studied for comparison with Japanese. This course assumes familiarity with linguistic theory.

President Ulysses S. Grant and Congress turned a blind eye to the disputed 1872 election of carpetbagger William P. Kellogg as governor of Louisiana. In this scene Kellogg holds up the heart which he has just extracted from the body of the female figure of Louisiana, who is held stretched across an altar by two freedmen. Enthroned behind the altar sits Grant, holding a sword. His attorney general, George H. Williams, the winged demon perched behind him, directs his hand. At left three other leering officials watch the operation, while at right women representing various states look on in obvious distress. South Carolina, kneeling closest to the altar, is in chains.|Signed: A. Zenneck.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|U. S. Grant, The Man and the Image, p. 58.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1871-1.|Exhibited: "Lee and Grant," Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia, and other venues, Sept. 2007 to March 2010.

This activity features differentiation and scaffolding to help students understand the new social freedoms and new threats to the families of freedmen during Reconstruction. Students work in heterogeneous skill-level groups to analyze several primary sources and prepare to write a paragraph about freedmen's new social freedoms. The activity in the lesson is framed for several consecutive 45-minute lessons, but could be adapted to meet the teacher's needs. The activity features documents from HERB that have been edited for different skill levels; the edited documents are including in the attached PDF "New Liberties and New Threats Worksheet." New York City high school teachers Arthur Everett and Samantha Schoeller created this activity.

This collection of resources is aligned to the NY Regents exam. However, as you look into the scope and sequence document you will find some great primary documents for US and Global History

New Visions for Public Schools has developed full scope and sequence curricular frameworks designed for the Global History and Geography I and II courses and the U.S. History course. The curriculum integrates rich primary and secondary texts, maps, images, videos, and other reputable online sources into materials that meet the New York State K-12 Social Studies Framework’s objectives and provide students an opportunity to improve literacy skills by focusing on thinking critically while reading, writing, and speaking like historians.

This resource serves as the in-class review activity over period five for the APUSH midterm summative assessment.