18.2 Reconstruction and Daily LifeObjective: To understand how African Americans worked to improve their lives following the Civil War.

Responding to Freedom (p.540-1)• What was the first response of African

Americans to freedom?

• How did the Freedmen’s Bureau try to help freedmen immediately after the Civil War?

FREEDMEN’S SCHOOLS

• Who ran the freedmen’s schools?

• Who attended the freedmen’s schools?

• How did many white Southerners react to the freedmen’s schools?

Why were many political leaders in the North and the South opposed to land reform?

To voting rights?

How did the Civil War affect the “peace” during Reconstruction?

Black sharecropping family in front of their cabinSharecropping gave African Americans more control over their labor than did labor contracts. But sharecropping also contributed to the south's dependence on one-crop agriculture and helped to perpetuate widespread rural poverty. (Library of Congress)

Black sharecropping family in front of their cabin

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SHARECROPPING

= system of farming in which a farmer tends some portion of a planter’s land and receives a share of the crop at harvest time as payment.

What were the advantages of the contract system for freedmen?

What were the disadvantages of the contract system for freedmen?

SHARECROPPING AND THE CYCLE OF DEBT

Poor whites & Freedmen have

no jobs, no homes, and no money to buy food.

At harvest time, the sharecropper owes more to the landlord than his

share of the crop is worth.

Share cropper cannot leave the farm

as long as he is in debt

to the landlord.

Poor whites & freedmen sign contracts

to work a landlord’s acreage in exchange for part of the crop.

Landlord keeps track of the money that sharecroppers

owe him for housing and food.

What is “lynching”?

Why was it an effective?

Why wasn’t it stopped?

Southern Counter-Reaction

• New Southern governments pass Black Codes

• Racial politics enforced (segregation)• Race riots & lynchings• KKK, vigilante “justice”• Sharecropping instituted• Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement of

Freedmen

Memphis Riots, May 2, 1866, Harper's WeeklyIn 1866, as Congress reviewed the progress of Reconstruction, news from the South had a considerable impact. Violence against black people, like the riot in Memphis depicted here, helped convince northern legislators that they had to modify President Johnson's policies. (Library of Congress)

Memphis Riots, May 2, 1866, Harper's Weekly

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Ku Klux Klan meetingIn this picture, the artist has portrayed a group of bizarrely dressed Klansmen contemplating the murder of a white Republican. (Library of Congress)

Ku Klux Klan meeting

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The First Vote

A newly freed slave casts his first vote. (Library of Congress)

The First Vote

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The Saga of Reconstructionhttp://video.pbs.org/video/2365206473/