1. 18.2 Reconstruction and Daily Life Objective: To understand how African Americans worked to improve their lives following the Civil War.

2. Responding to Freedom (p.540-1) What was the first response of African Americans to freedom? How did the Freedmen’s Bureau try to help freedmen immediately after the Civil War?

3. FREEDMEN’S SCHOOLS Who ran the freedmen’s schools? Who attended the freedmen’s schools? How did many white Southerners react to the freedmen’s schools?

4. Why were many political leaders in the North and the South opposed to land reform? To voting rights?

5. How did the Civil War affect the “peace” during Reconstruction?

6. Black sharecropping family in front of their cabin Sharecropping gave African Americans more control over their labor than did labor contracts. But sharecropping also contributed to the south's dependence on one-crop agriculture and helped to perpetuate widespread rural poverty. (Library of Congress) Black sharecropping family in front of their cabin Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. SHARECROPPING = system of farming in which a farmer tends some portion of a planter’s land and receives a share of the crop at harvest time as payment.

7. What were the advantages of the contract system for freedmen? What were the disadvantages of the contract system for freedmen?

8. SHARECROPPING AND THE CYCLE OF DEBT Poor whites & Freedmen have no jobs, no homes, and no money to buy food. At harvest time, the sharecropper owes more to the landlord than his share of the crop is worth. Share cropper cannot leave the farm as long as he is in debt to the landlord. Poor whites & freedmen sign contracts to work a landlord’s acreage in exchange for part of the crop. Landlord keeps track of the money that sharecroppers owe him for housing and food.

9. What is “lynching”? Why was it an effective? Why wasn’t it stopped?

10. Southern Counter-Reaction New Southern governments pass Black Codes Racial politics enforced (segregation) Race riots & lynchings KKK, vigilante “justice” Sharecropping instituted Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement of Freedmen

11. Memphis Riots, May 2, 1866, Harper's Weekly In 1866, as Congress reviewed the progress of Reconstruction, news from the South had a considerable impact. Violence against black people, like the riot in Memphis depicted here, helped convince northern legislators that they had to modify President Johnson's policies. (Library of Congress) Memphis Riots, May 2, 1866, Harper's Weekly Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

12. Ku Klux Klan meeting In this picture, the artist has portrayed a group of bizarrely dressed Klansmen contemplating the murder of a white Republican. (Library of Congress) Ku Klux Klan meeting Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

13. The First Vote A newly freed slave casts his first vote. (Library of Congress) The First Vote Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

14. The Saga of Reconstruction http://video.pbs.org/video/2365206473/