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Organizations established by former abolitionists to aid formerly enslaved people, one of which provide food and medical supplies to the Exodusters in Kansas.
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One of many white terrorist organizations associated with the bitterest and most violent opponents of Reconstruction and Black freedom. Formed in Pulaski, Tennessee, in late 1865, Klan members devoted themselves to denying African Americans any legitimate role in the public sphere, stressing the superiority of white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon citizens.
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U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the legality of Jim Crow laws, declaring that segregation based on race was constitutional as long as “separate” facilities were “equal.” It soon became clear, however, that facilities for Black Americans, such as schools, railroad cars, and waiting rooms, were rarely, if ever, equal to those provided for white people.
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The practice of a tenant farming the landlord’s ground for a share of the crop, sold when the harvest came in. This was the only available form of employment to many formerly enslaved people in the post–Civil War South and became a way of maintaining wealthy white power, ensuring Black indebtedness and dependence on white landowners.
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Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of freedom for enslaved people living in Confederate-controlled areas on January 1, 1863.
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An 1865 constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery in the United States except as a punishment for a crime.
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An 1870 constitutional amendment forbidding discrimination in voting on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
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The period following the Civil War when radical Republicans in Congress took control of Reconstruction policy, enacting legislation to protect the rights of Black citizens, especially the people recently freed from slavery.
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African Americans who fled the South in search of better opportunities and treatment in the West after the Civil War.
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An early social welfare project established on the coast of South Carolina after U.S. troops occupied the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia early in the war. Medical professionals, teachers, and missionaries came from the North to help freed people in their transition to freedom.
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A university located in Nashville, Tennessee, founded in 1866 to offer higher education to African American students.
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Native American name for the Black soldiers of the U.S. 9th and 10th Cavalry units. They served in the western territories and attempted to keep the peace between Native Americans and white settlers.