#teachreconstruction

[bunkie2021]

From the Zinn Education Project - November 1, 1890, Mississippi adopted a new constitution that featured a poll tax and literacy tests for voting, sections designed to disenfranchise newly-franchised African Americans and some poor whites. These statutes marked the end of a period of democratic progress that followed the Civil War, when African Americans were the majority of eligible voters in Mississippi. Mississippi set a precedent for the rest of the South. James Loewen notes, “[After 1890], every Southern state instituted literacy tests and poll taxes to effectively remove African Americans from the citizenship they were supposed to have been guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.” #blackhistory #knowyourhistory #TeachReconstruction and the history of #votersuppression with free classroom resources at zinnedproject.org. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bppi_y8DIFPhVPkceOKDPX2kfdZmG31Ty0ttKc0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1h0owpquyuuza

[bunkie2021]

From the Zinn Education Project - On December 9,1864 there was a Massacre at Ebenezer Creek. On the march to Savannah, thousands of African American families who had just escaped from slavery were left to drown by Sherman’s Army. Following the massacre, demands by Black ministers led to the short-lived land distribution during Reconstruction known as Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15. We highly recommend the YA book of historical fiction (for grades 7 to adult) called "Crossing Ebenezer Creek" by Tonya Bolden. #teachoutsidetextbook #TeachReconstruction #Reparations #blackhistory

[normanwayneturner]

#tdih 1874 Robert Smalls was elected to Congress as a representative from South Carolina. Born into slavery in 1839, Smalls freed himself and his family during the Civil War when he absconded with a Confederate warship in Charleston Harbor and sailed it past enemy ships and fortifications to reach the Union blockade. After becoming the first African American to captain a vessel in the U.S. Navy, Smalls entered local politics and helped establish schools and social services for freedmen in his hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina. He would serve five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Overview: http://bit.ly/2lNRE2M #TeachReconstruction Please read and share this article on teaching about Reconstruction: https://zinnedproject.org/2017/10/when-black-lives-mattered/ If you want more students to learn people's history, please contribute today (we get no corporate support, we depend on individuals like you): https://zinnedproject.org/donate/

[bunkie2021]

"You may expel us, gentlemen, but I firmly believe that you will some day repent it. The Black man cannot protect a country, if the country doesn't protect him; and if, tomorrow, a war should arise, I would not raise a musket to defend a country where my manhood is denied. The fashionable way in Georgia, when hard work is to be done, is for the white man to sit at his ease while the Black man does the work; but, sir, I will say this much to the colored men of Georgia, as, if I should be killed in this campaign, I may have no opportunity of telling them at any other time: Never lift a finger nor raise a hand in defense of Georgia, until Georgia acknowledges that you are men and invests you with the rights pertaining to manhood." -- Henry McNeal Turner on 9/3/1868 on being one of 24 African American representatives expelled from the Georgia Legislature. Listen to excerpt of speech read by Danny Glover from Voices of a People's History of the United States and see a link to his full speech: http://bit.ly/14fH9X0 Here are more resources for teaching about the Reconstruction era of the United States: http://bit.ly/1N540Ij #TeachReconstruction #blackhistory