After Reconstruction
Land did not change hands
- Southern plantation owners continued to own the majority of the region's land even after Reconstruction.
- Formerly enslaved persons sought land ownership but generally fell short of self-sufficiency, as an exploitative and soil-intensive sharecropping system limited blacks' and poor whites' access to land in the South.
- And poor whites — the CED says the system constrained both groups, which is a fact about class as well as race.
After Reconstruction, most of the region's land was owned by...
Sharecropping limited access for blacks and poor whites.
Rights stripped by four means
- Segregation, violence, Supreme Court decisions, and local political tactics progressively stripped away African American rights.
- Four means, and they operate at different levels: social, physical, judicial, and procedural.
- Progressively describes a process over years, not a single reversal — which is why 5.10's three granted rights disappeared at different rates.
Select all four means by which rights were stripped away.
Social, physical, judicial and procedural.
And a long-delayed effect
- ...but the 14th and 15th amendments eventually became the basis for court decisions upholding civil rights in the 20th century.
- Eventually is doing a century of work in one word, and the CED puts it in the same sentence as the stripping.
- So the amendments failed in the short term and succeeded in the long one, which is why 5.1 called the questions unresolved rather than answered.
A continuity, a means of stripping rights, or the long-term effect?
Sort each element of the post-Reconstruction South.
'Eventually became the basis for court decisions' refers to...
Short-term failure, long-term success.
"Eventually" carries a century in one word. The same sentence that records rights being progressively stripped away says the 14th and 15th amendments eventually became the basis for court decisions upholding civil rights in the 20th century — short-term failure and long-term success, which is why 5.1 called these questions unresolved.
Select all the continuities this lesson names.
Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment.
Continuity and change, in the objective's terms
- Change: slavery abolished, amendments written, offices briefly opened.
- Continuity: land ownership unchanged, poverty structured by sharecropping, rights progressively removed.
- The objective asks about what it meant to be American, so both belong: the definition was expanded on paper and contested in practice.
A right written into a constitution and not enforced is not the same as no right at all.
A later generation can pick up the claim.
Regional and national understandings
- The objective asks about regional and national understandings of what it meant to be American.
- Regionally: a South whose land and labour arrangements survived defeat, and a North whose resolve waned.
- Nationally: a constitutional definition of citizenship that outlived the political will to enforce it — until the 20th century.
A right written into a constitution and not enforced is not the same as no right at all. It is a claim left on the record, and a later generation can pick it up without having to win the argument again.
Southern plantation owners continued to own the majority of the region's land even after Reconstruction, and formerly enslaved persons sought land ownership but generally fell short of self-sufficiency, as an exploitative and soil-intensive sharecropping system limited blacks' and poor whites' access to land. Segregation, violence, Supreme Court decisions, and local political tactics progressively stripped away African American rights, but the 14th and 15th amendments eventually became the basis for court decisions upholding civil rights in the 20th century.