Reconstruction Study Guide
Important people to know:
W.E.B. Du Bois:
Segregation should be stopped now. FULL political, civil, and social rights for African Americans.
Booker T. Washington:
 Accepted segregation. Equality gained through vocational education,
THEN, worry about segregation later.
Robert E. Lee:
 Urged Southerners to reconcile at the end of the war and reunite as Americans.
Became president of Washington College which is now known as Washington and Lee University.
Abraham Lincoln:
 Reconstruction plan called for reconciliation, Preservation of the Union.
Frederick Douglass:
Wanted constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights, powerful human voice for human rights
and civil liberties for all.
Important Amendments and Laws to know:
Amendments & Supreme Courts Cases
Thirteenth Amendment
Important Facts
Ended/banned slavery in the United States
Fourteenth Amendment
Citizenship to Blacks and full protection under the
law (life, liberty & property).
Fifteenth Amendment
Gave black men the right to vote.
Plessy V. Ferguson
Jim Crow and Segregation Laws
“Separate but equal” - Supreme Court case
Laws that limited the rights of blacks. It kept Blacks
and Whites separate and gave power to the rich whites.
Reconstruction Effects
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Southern military leaders could not hold office.
“Carpetbaggers” took advantage of the South during Reconstruction.
African Americans gained equal rights given by the Civil Rights Act of 1866; federal troops to enforce.
Northern soldiers supervised the South.
Freedman’s Bureau established aid to former slaves in the South.
RECONSTRUCTION ENDED WITH THE COMPROMISE OF 1877 (leading to…)
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Racial segregation
“Jim Crow” laws
based on race mostly at African Americans, other groups also kept segregated.
passed to discriminate against African Americans.
“Jim Crow” laws:
 Made discrimination practices legal in many communities and states.
 Gave unequal opportunities in housing, work, education, government for African Americans.
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