Skip to Main Content

Graphic Organizer: Primary Sources in Lesson 3, Plainest Demands of Justice

To what extent did Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for African Americans from Reconstruction to the end of the nineteenth century?

  • I can interpret primary sources related to Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice from Reconstruction to the end of the nineteenth century.
  • I can explain how laws and policy, courts, and individuals and groups contributed to or pushed back against the quest for liberty, equality, and justice for African Americans.
  • I can create an argument using evidence from primary sources.
  • I can analyze issues in history to help find solutions to present-day challenges.

Directions: Identify the main ideas and connections to the Founding principles using the information you gathered from your assigned documents.

Document Title and Date Main ideas Connection to or Violation of Founding Principles
General Order No. 3, June 19, 1865, U.S. Major General Gordon Granger
The Reconstruction Amendments: Thirteenth Amendment, 1865, Fourteenth Amendment, 1868, Fifteenth Amendment, 1870
Frederick Douglass, “What the Black Man Wants,” 1865
The Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1865
An Act to Confer Civil Rights on Freedmen, and for Other Purposes, 1865 (Mississippi Black Code)
Civil Rights Act of 1866
Attacking the Freedmen’s Bureau Poster, 1866
African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Pastor S. B. Williams Reports Atrocities to North Carolina Governor Holden, 1869
Albion W. Tourgée’s Letter to Senator Joseph C. Abbott, 1870
Congressman Robert B. Elliott’s Speech in Support of the Civil Rights Act, January 1874
Image: Thomas Nast, “The Union As It Was,” 1874
Congressman James T. Rapier’s Speech in Support of the Civil Rights Act, February 1875
Civil Rights Act, 1875
Strauder v. West Virginia, 1880
Civil Rights Cases, 1883
Frederick Douglass, “Speech on the Civil Rights Cases,” 1883
Louisiana Separate Car Act, 1890
Mississippi Constitution, 1890
Anna Julia Cooper, “A Voice from the South,” 1892
Frederick Douglass, “The Blessings of Liberty and Education,” 1894
Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address, 1895
Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
Images from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 1866–1900