This Teacher's Guide provides compelling questions to frame a unit of study and inquiry projects on the Reconstruction Era, includes NEH sponsored multimedia resources, activity ideas that include use of newspapers from the time and interdisciplinary approaches to bring social studies, ELA, and music education together, and resources for a DBQ and seminar.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a historically violent American organization that has operated in three periods to promote white supremacy and white nationalism and resist immigration. Founded after the Civil War as a secret society by Confederate generals, the First Klan’s primary focus was subverting Republican Reconstruction policies and preventing emancipated African Americans from receiving the benefits of citizenship. Despite its success disrupting black political participation through threats and actual violence, federal government efforts to suppress the Klan in 1870-1871 forced in a major decline in its activities.

On April 26, 1913, Confederate Memorial Day, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan was murdered at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, Georgia. Leo Frank, the Jewish, New York-raised superintendent of the National Pencil Company, was charged with the crime. At the same time, Atlanta’s economy was transforming from rural and agrarian to urban and industrial. Resources for investing in new industry came from Northern states, as did most industrial leaders, like Leo Frank. Many of the workers in these new industrial facilities were children, like Mary Phagan. Over the next two years, Leo Frank’s legal case became a national story with a highly publicized, controversial trial and lengthy appeal process that profoundly affected Jewish communities in Georgia and the South, and impacted the careers of lawyers, politicians, and publishers. By the early twentieth century, Jewish communities had become well-established in most major Southern cities, continuing a path of migration that began during colonial times. The Leo Frank case and its aftermath revealed lingering regional hostilities from the Civil War and Reconstruction, intensified existing racial and cultural inequalities (particularly anti-Semitism), embodied socioeconomic problems (such as child labor), and exposed the brutality of lynching in the South. The exhibition was created by the Digital Library of Georgia (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/). Exhibition Organizers: Charles Pou, Mandy Mastrovita, and Greer Martin.

U.S. History is designed for a two-semester American history sequence. It is traditional in coverage, following a roughly chronological outline, and using a balanced approach that includes political, economic, social, and cultural developments. At the same time, the book includes a number of innovative and interactive features designed to enhance student learning. Instructors can also customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe Lincoln’s plan to restore the Union at the end of the Civil War
Discuss the tenets of Radical Republicanism
Analyze the success or failure of the Thirteenth Amendment

8 – U5.3.1 Compare the different positions concerning the reconstruction of Southern society and the nation, including the positions of President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson, Republicans, and African Americans.

8 – U5.3.1 Compare the different positions concerning the reconstruction of Southern society and the nation, including the positions of President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson, Republicans, and African Americans.
8 – U5.3.2 Describe the early responses to the end of the Civil War by describing the
policies of the Freedmen’s Bureau (E2.2)
restrictions placed on the rights and opportunities of freedmen, including racial segregation and Black Codes (C2, C5)

8 – U5.3.5 Explain the decision to remove Union troops in 1877 and investigate its impact on Americans.