In this activity students create a "magic lantern show," or presentation that illustrates how African American defined freedom for themselves after emancipation and the challenges and threats they faced. Students use primary sources from the Reconstruction period. This activity can accompany a viewing of the filmDr. Toer's Amazing Magic Lantern Show: A Different View of Emancipation.

A searing, election-year indictment of four prominent figures in the Democratic party, three of them former Confederate officers. Former New York governor and Democratic presidential nominee Horatio Seymour is portrayed as a "rioter." Standing in a burning city, he waves his hat in the air while he steps on the back of a crawling figure. In the background a corpse hangs from a lamppost. Between 1862 and 1864 Seymour had opposed Lincoln's war policies, and he was branded as instigator of the 1863 New York draft riots. (See "The Meeting of the Friends, City Hall Park," no. 1863-12.) Below the portrait are inflammatory passages from his speeches. Tennessee general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, and infamous for his role in the massacre of surrendered Union troops at Fort Pillow, is called "The Butcher Forrest." He waves a flag labeled "No Quarter" and fires a pistol. Extracts from reports of the Pillow massacre are given below his picture. Confederate admiral Raphael Semmes is portrayed as a pirate, wielding a knife in one hand and holding aloft a flaming torch in the other. Behind him flies a flag with a skull and crossbones. To the right a family cowers in fright. Semmes was the scourge of Union shipping during the Civil War. Under his command the "Alabama," a British-built ship, captured sixty-two merchant vessels, most of which were burned. An excerpt from Semmes's July 1868 speech at Mobile, Alabama, appears below this image. Confederate cavalry officer Wade Hampton appears as a hangman. He holds his plumed hat at his side and wears a uniform embossed with a skull and crossbones and a belt inscribed "C.S.A" (Confederate States of America). In the distance three Yankee soldiers hang from a gallows. |Signed: Th. Nast.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1868-7.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a historically violent American organization that has operated in three periods to promote white supremacy and white nationalism and resist immigration. Founded after the Civil War as a secret society by Confederate generals, the First Klan’s primary focus was subverting Republican Reconstruction policies and preventing emancipated African Americans from receiving the benefits of citizenship. Despite its success disrupting black political participation through threats and actual violence, federal government efforts to suppress the Klan in 1870-1871 forced in a major decline in its activities.

 U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.Senior Contributing AuthorsP. Scott Corbett, Ventura CollegeVolker Janssen, California State University, FullertonJohn M. Lund, Keene State CollegeTodd Pfannestiel, Clarion UniversityPaul Vickery, Oral Roberts UniversitySylvie Waskiewicz

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Explain the reasons for the collapse of ReconstructionDescribe the efforts of white southern “redeemers” to roll back the gains of Reconstruction