Reconstruction

Explore the history of African American education through the stories of several Virginia educators. How did emancipation affect education? How have people fought for equal access to education in the United States?

Through infographics and newspaper clippings, explore the role that family and kinship ties played in helping enslaved people cope with the condition of slavery, as well as what challenges people faced with finding and rebuilding their families after emancipation.

How did life change for formerly enslaved people after emancipation? How did it stay the same?

How did people of color fight for equal rights, and in what ways did systems oppression keep them from achieving rights in reality?

Discover the origins of universal citizenship for people born in the U.S. and how that birthright principle continues to impact national conversations about citizenship 150 years later.

This lesson plan covers the Reconstruction period with three artworks. It also includes a short introduction to different Reconstruction plans from three different political viewpoints.
via Smithsonian National Museum of American Art and Portraiture