Period: 1865

Reconstruction Period: 1865 – 1876
Find more resources and our national report on teaching Reconstruction at Teach Reconstruction Campaign.

Indian Removal

Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 18 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 7 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on the American policy of "Manifest Destiny" and Native American resistance to their own displacement.
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The Expansion of Empire

Teaching Activity. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 15 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 12 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on internal dissent over American expansionist policies.
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Remembering Slavery

Book — Non-fiction and CD. Edited by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller. Foreword by Robin D.G. Kelley. 2007. 359 pages.
Oral histories of first-person accounts of slavery.
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Riot (Book) - YA historical fiction about the 1863 Draft Riots by Walter Dean Myers | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's HIstory

Riot

Book — Fiction. By Walter Dean Myers. 2011. 176 pages,
Historical novel about the 1863 draft riots in New York for young adults.
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Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule

Book — Fiction. By Harriette Gillem Robinet. 1998. 144 pages.
Historical fiction featuring 12-year-old Pascal, 8-year-old Nellie, and their older brother Gideon, a Union Army aide, as they claim and farm the land promised to them during Reconstruction.
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Roudanez: History and Legacy

Digital collection. The work of Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, founder of the first Black daily newspaper in the U.S., the New Orleans Tribune, with articles, excerpts, videos, and a timeline.
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In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse

Book — Fiction. By Joseph Marshall III. Illustrations by Jim Yellowhawk. 2015. 176 pages.
A contemporary Native American boy learns about the history of Crazy Horse in a journey with his grandfather.
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Slavery by Another Name (Film) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Slavery by Another Name

Film. By Sam Pollard, Catherine Allan, Douglas Blackmon and Sheila Curran Bernard. 2012. 90 minutes.
Reveals the interlocking forces in the South and the North that enabled “neoslavery” post-Emancipation Proclamation.
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Reconstructing the South: A Role Play

Lesson. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
This role play engages students in thinking about what freedpeople needed in order to achieve — and sustain — real freedom following the Civil War. It's followed by a chapter from the book Freedom's Unfinished Revolution.
Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow
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