Tacoma Community College Library: African American History: Emancipation &amp; Reconstruction

Emancipation & The Reconstruction Era

"The Black Codes were a set of laws that bound blacks back to the fields following Reconstruction. The Black Codes required that blacks serve out labor contracts, often under their former masters. The purpose of these codes and Jim Crow was to maintain white supremacy, even to the extent that in all interactions blacks had with whites, it was mandatory they practice deference as a part of “proper” etiquette. The degradation of Jim Crow served not only to entertain whites by ridiculing blacks but also, more important, to economically exploit blacks."

- From "Jim Crow" in the Encyclopedia of Social Problems
(text and image " Freedmen voting in New Orleans "cited below, click image to enlarge)

Featured Websites & Collections

Linked below are websites, online exhibits, and other digital collections with resources on topics related to African American history in the United States.

13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865)
From the America's Historical Documents collection at the National Archives
Equal Justice Initiative
"The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society."
Emancipation Petitions - Civil War Washington
This is a collection of digitized petitions from slaves in the District of Columbia seeking emancipation, early 1860s
The Liberator - Historic Newspaper Collection
Access digital copies of "The Boston-based radical abolitionist newspaper The Liberator was published weekly from January 1, 1831 to December 29, 1865. The Liberator was founded and published by William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp and was a leading vehicle for unrelenting advocacy of the abolitionist cause and for the immediate and total emancipation of all enslaved persons in the United States."
Library of Congress: The African American Odyssey - A Quest for Full Citizenship
This Library of Congress collection features "more than 240 items, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, and plays in the largest black history exhibit ever presented by the Library."
more...less...
Includes the following sections: Slavery—The Peculiar Institution | Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period | Abolition, Anti-Slavery Movements, and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy | The Civil War | Reconstruction and Its Aftermath | The Booker T. Washington Era | World War I and Postwar Society | The Depression, The New Deal, and World War II | The Civil Rights Era
Mapping Race in America
And interactive map from the Othering & Belonging Institute. "Use this map to observe the level and change in racial residential segregation across the United States."
Reconstruction In America Racial Violence After the Civil War, 1865-1876
A report, with various topic chapters, from the Equal Justice Initiative. Linked here as well, is a
visual guide which is accessible under the "Resources" options of the website.
more...less...
https://eji.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/reconstruction-visual-reading-guide.pdf

Featured Videos

Linked below are videos both freely online through websites like YouTube or TED, as well as from the library's collection in such databases as Kanopy, Films on Demand, or Academic Video Online. Click or hover your cursor over the icon to learn more about each item.

The Abolitionist Roots of Reconstruction
A lecture, 60min + with Manisha Sinha, from the National Humanities Center Education Programs
more...less...
Recent events have revealed the importance of teaching and understanding the period of Reconstruction in United States history. Drawing on research from her forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: A New History of Reconstruction, 1860-1900 (2023), Manisha Sinha will discuss how educators can incorporate the histories of abolition and Reconstruction in a more robust way by understanding how ordinary American citizens, men and women, Black and White, helped to expand the boundaries of American democracy through progressive constitutionalism and state formation at the national and state levels. Reconstruction, which was overthrown through a concerted campaign of political terror and legal chicanery, reveals the contested nature of American democracy with important historical lessons for our own times. By the end of this webinar, teachers will be able to draw on these insights to develop an expanded sense of this era in their classrooms.
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, Episode 3, Into the Fire: 1861-1896
Amendment 13: The Abolition of Slavery
A short, ~13 minute, video streaming on Films on Demand
Black Codes
A short video from NBC News Learn
Crash Course: Reconstruction and 1876 From the US History series
Crash Course: Slave Codes
A video from the Black History series
Reconstruction: America After the Civil War A short 'Inside Look' video from PBS
Reconstruction: The Vote
A short vide from "Black History in Two Minutes (or so)"
The Reconstruction Era (Documentary) "The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865); it lasted from 1865 to 1877 & marked a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States. Reconstruction, as directed by Congress, abolished slavery & ended the remnants of Confederate secession in the Southern states. It proclaimed the newly freed slaves (freedmen; black people) citizens with (ostensibly) the same civil rights as those of whites; these rights were nominally guaranteed by three new constitutional amendments: the 13th, 14th, & 15th, collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments. "
TED Talks: What is Juneteenth, and why is it important?
A TED-Ed video by Karlos K. Hill and Soraya Field Fiorio
White Supremacy, Eugenics and the History of Selective Breeding: NBC Left Field
A short video from NBC News

Featured Podcasts

Linked here are full podcasts or podcast episodes, as well as short audio recordings from news programs such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the like.

How Ex-Slaves Built New Lives for Themselves – and America – After the Civil War [Podcast]
An episode of the History Unplugged Podcast
How 9 Former Slaves Started a Proto University in Alabama in 1867 [Podcast]
History Unplugged Podcast
more...less...
Alabama State University is well known as a historically black university and for the involvement of its faculty and students in the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the school's remarkable origins, having begun as the Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama, founded by nine former slaves. These men are rightly considered the progenitors of Alabama State University, as they had the drive and perseverance to face the challenges posed by a racial and political culture bent on preventing the establishment of black schools and universities. It is thanks to the actions of the Marion Nine that Alabama's rural Black Belt produces a disproportionate number of African American Ph.D. recipients, a testament to the vision of "the Lincoln Normal School's founders."
Reconstruction: America’s Terrible National Hangover After the Civil War [Podcast]
History Unplugged Podcast
more...less...
"After the massive devastation and scorched earth wartime methods of the Civil War, America tried to rebuild itself. This era was known as Reconstruction and lasted from 1865 to 1877. Many hoped at the beginning that the South would peacefully re-enter the Union, slaves would enjoy full liberty as American citizens, and the United States would emerge stronger.

It didn’t. Reconstruction showed that many of the divisions in the United States were as wide as ever. Thousands of freed slaves were not accepted anywhere and arrested on charges of vagrancy. Others died of disease or starvation. Radical Republicans sought citizenship full legal equality of black Americans, while Southerners sought segregation and white supremacy.

But despite the challenges, many former slaves said all that mattered was freedom. Rachel Adams of Georgia summed up the feeling of many formerly enslaved people when she said she could “live on just bread and water as long” as she was free. The men, women, and children who emerged from bondage built schools, developed communities and “made a way out of no way.”
Black Reconstruction in Indian Territory
Episode 130 of "15 Minute History"
How Did American Slavery End? [Podcast]
An episode from the podcast, The History of American Slavery.
more...less...
"In Episode 9, the finale episode of the History of American Slavery, hosts Rebecca Onion and Jamelle Bouie discuss emancipation. They examine how emancipation was more a process than an overnight change, and they compare the different ways it was enacted in the South and throughout the United States. They also discuss how people sought to rebuild their lives and reunite their families once they had achieved freedom from slavery. They begin the episode by remembering the life of Rose Herera (1835–unknown)."
Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Contentious Path to Emancipation [Podcast]
An episode of the History Unplugged Podcast
more...less...
"In a little-noted eulogy delivered shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Frederick Douglass called the martyred president “emphatically the Black man’s president,” and the “first to show any respect for their rights as men.” To justify his description, Douglass pointed not just to Lincoln’s official acts and utterances, like the Emancipation Proclamation or the Second Inaugural Address, but also to the president’s own personal experiences with Black people. Referring to one of his White House visits, Douglass said: “In daring to invite a Negro to an audience at the White House, Mr. Lincoln was saying to the country: I am President of the Black people as well as the white, and I mean to respect their rights and feelings as men and as citizens.”"
Juneteenth: Celebrate Freedom [Podcast]
An episode of the podcast, Humanity Archive
Slave Codes, Black Codes & Jim Crow: Codifying the Color Line [Podcast]
An episode of Dig: A History Podcast

Sources used on this page:

Civil Rights Movement, U.S. (2008). In W. A. Darity, Jr. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 551-552). Macmillan Reference USA. https://link-gale-com.tacomacc.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/CX3045300345/GVRL?u=tacoma_comm&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=d0c1b9f2

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. (1867). Freedmen voting in New Orleans Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-3fd9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Featured Books & eBooks

Use the arrows to scroll through titles; click on the titles for more info and/or access

Facing Freedom : An African American Community in Virginia From Reconstruction to Jim Crow

Becoming American under Fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship during the Civil War Era

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 : Series 3, Volume 1: Land and Labor, 1865

They Left Great Marks on Me : African American Testimonies of Racial Violence From Emancipation to World War I

The Diary of Nannie Haskins Williams : A Southern Woman’s Story of Rebellion and Reconstruction, 1863–1890

Suffrage Reconstructed : Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era

The Record of Murders and Outrages : Racial Violence and the Fight Over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction

Illusions of Emancipation : The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery

The African American Roots of Modernism : From Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance

Slavery and Emancipation

The Long Emancipation : The Demise of Slavery in the United States

Emancipation Betrayed : The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida From Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920

The First Reconstruction : Black Politics in America From the Revolution to the Civil War

Reconstructing the South

Lincoln and Emancipation

The Record of Murders and Outrages : Racial Violence and the Fight Over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction

They say : Ida B. Wells and the reconstruction of race

Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas

Black rights in the Reconstruction era

Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement

Background Articles

Linked below are articles that give a general overview of the topic, largely coming from subject-specific books or other reference sources. Find more articles like this by searching in Gale Ebooks, linked on the "Library Resources" tab of this guide.

All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw
An autobiography of former sharecropper, Nate Shaw
Emancipation Proclamation
From the Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History
Jim Crow
an article from the Encyclopedia of Social Problems
Political Activity, Migration, and Urbanization: Reconstruction, Civil Rights, and Modern African America
An article from the Encyclopedia of African American History
Separate-but-Equal
From the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
Celebrating Black History Month, Part II: Reconstruction
An article from the National Endowment for the Humanities
14th Amendment Summary
An article with additional linked resources from the ThoughtCo.
Emancipation and Reconstruction
From the Library of Congress learning resources, this page features primary sources and an article on the topic.
Discover the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network
An article, with linked resources, from the National Parks Service