When Did the Civil Rights Movement Begin? Reconstruction & the Civil Rights Act of 1875

BRIdge from the Past: Art Across U.S. History is a new YouTube series for students that explores an important historic image every episode to gain insights into the culture, politics, and society of a particular time in U.S. history. Host Mary Patterson will explain how each primary source is its own “window to the past,” revealing new areas for contemplation and discussion.

Join BRI Senior Teaching Fellow Tony Williams as he sits down with historian LeeAnna Keith, contributor to BRI’s new Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness textbook on the immense obstacles that African Americans continued to encounter during the Reconstruction era and into the twentieth century. Keith explains how African Americans suffered tragic racial violence and white supremacy during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, despite constitutional protections in the Reconstruction Amendments, the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, and 15th Amendments. She also touches on an array of other important postwar developments, such as the segregation of African Americans under Jim Crow laws and various restrictions on black civil rights. Finally, Keith finds encouragement in the influential ideas of W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington for justice and equality and the civil rights movement of the twentieth century.

What impact did the Reconstruction Amendments have on the application of our Founding principles? In this video, Mary and Gary explore two Reconstruction-era cartoons by Thomas Nast. “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner" (1869) and “The Union As It Was" (1874) give insight into the nature of liberty and equality in the United States shortly after the Civil War. Do you agree with Nast’s commentary about the intentions and consequences of Reconstruction?

The Civil War and Reconstruction period produced significant political, economic, and social transformations in the United States, but for African Americans the progress had mixed results at best. The legacy of the Civil War included the central question of what emancipation meant beyond the destruction of the institution of slavery.