What exactly should be done for freedmen, if anything, was hotly debated in the years following the Civil War. As this exchange between a Union military officer and a former slave in Arkansas shows, even the meaning of freedom was up for grabs.

In the fall of 1865, white southerners, most of them ex-Confederates and planters, won large majorities in local and state elections throughout the South. They quickly passed a series of restrictive laws, or Black Codes, which varied only slightly…

Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery, before the Civil War had ended. Once the war was over, white southerners passed laws (known as Black Codes) to keep freedmen from exercising their rights, and Congress…

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…

This booklet is curriculum support for the American Social History Project's 30-minute documentary Dr. Toer's Amazing Lantern Show: A Different View of Emancipation. The viewer's guide contains background information on issues raised by the…

After the end of slavery, African Americans, particularly those who attempted to exercise their right to vote, were often the victims of harassment, intimidation, and murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was a secret society founded by…

In the speech below, Bayley Wyat, an ex-slave, protests the eviction of blacks from confiscated plantations in Virginia in 1866. Like so many other nineteenth-century Americans, white and black, freed people wanted to work the land as self-sufficient…

This illustration from Harper's Weekly features three figures symbolizing black political leadership: a skilled craftsman, a sophisticated city dweller, and a Union Army veteran.

During slavery, planters had tried to keep African Americans from learning to read and write, sometimes even passing laws against educating slaves. After Emancipation, freedpeople displayed a tremendous desire to learn. Some wanted to read the Bible;…

Because marriages between slaves before emancipation had no legal standing, many couples rushed to have their marriages officially registered and made solemn during Reconstruction. The Freedmen's Bureau along with African-American ministers became…