Learning for Justice
The Color of Law: Winners and Losers in the Job Market
The second instructional activity in "The Color of Law" shows how government policies supported economic inequality. Scholars read additional excerpts and respond to text-dependent questions from "The Color of Law" text, examine primary...
Facing History and Ourselves
The Legacies of Reconstruction
The final lesson in the seven-resource Reconstruction Era collection examines the legacies of Reconstruction. Class members investigate why the period has been called an "unfinished revolution," "a splendid failure," and "the second...
Digital Public Library of America
Teaching Guide: Exploring To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, considered by many to be a seminal piece of American literature, contains many complex literary themes that carry through United States history. Use a series of discussion questions and classroom...
Center for History and New Media
Growing Up in a Segregated Society, 1880s–1930s
What did segregation look like in the beginning of the 20th century? Middle and high schoolers view images of segregated areas, read passages by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, and come to conclusions about how the influence of...
Alabama Department of Archives and History
Alabama Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers, 1865 to Present
The tenant farming and sharecropping systems that developed in the South after the Civil War, the reasons for their development, and the eventual decline of these systems are the focus of this two-day plan.
Alabama Department of Archives and History
African American Life After the Civil War - Sharecropping
What is the sharecropping system? What role did it play in the post-Civil War economy of the South? Who were the sharecroppers? Who employed them? How were they paid? To answer these questions, kids examine a series of sharecropper...
Curated OER
The Sharecrop System , Yesterday and Today
Eleventh graders are able to define sharecropping, wage labor and labor gangs. They identify races and economic classes of people involved in sharecropping. Students determine the economic and physical geographic circumstances that led...
Curated OER
Mexican-American Life in Texas
Sixth graders examine the development of cotton farms in Texas and the use of Mexican-Americans as a labor force. They examine pictures of life on cotton farms and draw pictures of themselves performing one of their own daily chores. ...
![Bullock Museum: Chapter Eight: Civil War to Centennial [Pdf] Unit Plan](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "Bullock Museum: Chapter Eight: Civil War to Centennial [Pdf] Unit Plan")
Bullock Texas State History Museum
Bullock Museum: Chapter Eight: Civil War to Centennial [Pdf]
A teacher guide designed to support a visit to the Bullock Museum, but can be used on its own using available resources. Includes information, discussion questions, activities, and worksheets. This module looks at Texas from the time of...
Other
University of Western Georgia: Reconstruction in the South
An excellent distillation of the many issues addressed in the Reconstruction period in the South in the twelve years after the end of the Civil War.
OpenStax
Open Stax: The Collapse of Reconstruction
This section from a chapter on "The Era of Reconstruction" explains the reasons for the collapse of Reconstruction and describes the efforts of white southern "redeemers" to roll back the gains of Reconstruction.
Stanford University
Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Sharecropping
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students solve a problem surrounding a historical question by reading primary source documents. This historical inquiry instructional activity allows students to critically evaluate their classroom...
University of Illinois
University of Illinois: Modern American Poetry: A Photo Dossier on Sharecropping
Photographs from the 1930s of both black and white sharecroppers, with some accompanying explanation.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Reconstruction: African American Identity: 1865 1917
An interview, government reports, two paintings, and a work song that explore the constraints placed upon African American freedom in the late-nineteenth century as a result of reconstruction.
George Mason University
Chnm: The Sea Islands: An Experiment in Land Redistribution
Tells about the Special Field Order #15 and the purpose of Sherman's order to provide land for freedmen. From the Center for History and New Media.
Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Press.
New Georgia Encyclopedia: Sharecropping
Features a detailed discussion of sharecropping, a labor system that developed in Georgia after the Civil War in which workers raised crops for someone else in exchange for a share of the crop.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Ap Us History: 1865 1898: After the Civil War: The New South
After the Civil War, there was some impetus to modernize the South's economy to make it more industrialized and less agrarian. It never gained traction while sharecropping and tenant farming did, ensuring the persistence of rural...
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: Rebuilding the Old Order
Reconstruction in the South engendered corruption, greed, a poor economy, and a backlash against the idea of allowing freed slaves to take part in political and civic life. Read about the formation of paramilitary groups who attempted to...
University of Illinois
University of Illinois: Modern American Poetry: About Sharecropping
Three articles about the effects of sharecropping, a farming system that became prevalent after the Civil War for blacks and whites.
Country Studies US
Country Studies: Agrarian Distress and Rise of Populism
This resource is provided for by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. It discusses how the late 1800s was a time of economic and agrarian distress for many farmers in the US. Facing tremendous as a result of their...
Discovery Education
Discovery Education: African American Population Shifts
After completing this mini-unit, students will understand some of the economic, educational, and lifestyle reasons why African Americans have moved from one place in the United States to another.