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Legacy of Reconstruction Primary Source Set

Seven images that showcase the legacy of Reconstruction.

Primary Source Documents

Student Instructions:

  • Read the End of Reconstruction essay.
  • Highlight a line or two from the essay you feel fits best with each primary source.
  • Summarize the highlighted line(s) on each of your sticky notes.
  • Put your essay away, leaving your sticky notes out.
  • From these seven sticky notes, combine to narrow down from seven to five “events” for your End of Reconstruction Timeline formative assessment, combining any commonalities.
  • Then, on the formative assessment Timeline, write your five “events” that led to the end of Reconstruction.

Source 1

Caption: Black man drinks from water fountain labeled “Colored”.

Lee, Russell, photographer. Negro drinking at “Colored” water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. United States Oklahoma City Oklahoma, 1939. July. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017740552/.

Source 2

Caption: From a pamphlet titled To the Colored Men of Voting Age in the Southern States.

African American Pamphlet Collection. To the Colored Men of Voting Age in the Southern States. [Philadelphia: Press of E.A. Wright, 190-?, 1900] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/92838850/.

Source 3

Caption: Members of the Ku Klux Klan hold midnight meeting.

30,000 KKK hold midnight rite. , ca. 1920. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003679693/.

Source 4

Caption: Campaign poster for Republican candidate President Ulysses Grant and Vice President Schuyler Colfax

Clarry & Reilly, and M.B. Brown & Co. National Union Republican nomination. For president Gen. U.S. Grant. For vice president, Schuyler Colfax. United States, 1868. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661706/.

Source 5

Caption: Cover page to a 1906 book on election of 1876.

Haworth, Paul Leland. The Hayes-Tilden disputed presidential election of. Cleveland, The Burrows brothers company, 1906. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/06022324/.

Source 6

Caption: ”Panic, As a Health Officer, Sweeping the Garbage out of Wall Street”

Bellew, Frank. Panic, as a health officer, sweeping the garbage out of Wall Street. Wall Street New York, 1873. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2013650090/.

Source 7

Caption: Federal enforcement stands between group of Black and white Americans.

Waud, Alfred R. , Artist. The Freedmen’s Bureau / Drawn by A.R. Waud. , 1868. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/92514996/.