Discussion forum
Reconstruction and the Meaning of Victory, 1865-1877
Should Southern cities remove Confederate monuments in the 21st century? (found in the Module 1 Intro video & Opposition in the South)
Should LSU rename its buildings that were named after former Confederate officers and segregationists? (found in Module 1 Intro video & Opposition in the South)
Nothing But Freedom: Was Reconstruction a Social Revolution?
How does Nast’s cartoon, “Pardon and Franchise” reveal Thomas Nast’s views about the government’s policies toward pardoning ex-Confederates and enfranchising African Americans?
Is it effective or distracting to compare these two policies in the same cartoon? (found in Failed Attempts for Suffrage and Equal Rights)
Franchise. And Not This Man?” (1865)
Do you think fighting for Woman Suffrage would have hurt the chances of passing Black Suffrage? (found in Failed Attempts for Suffrage and Equal Rights)
Why would white businessmen in New Orleans support civil rights for African Americans? Do you buy the idea that economic success in the “New South” was linked to the civil rights of the former slaves?
Farmers Freedmen: Agriculture, Race, Politics in the New South, 1877-1900 On your own, try to answer these questions from this 1964 Louisiana Literacy Test (an accessible version of the Literacy Test ).
Why would Southern states require its citizens to take such elaborate tests at the voting booth? (found in The Age of Jim Crow)“Negro Expulsion from a Railway Car” was printed in 1856, but it was recirculated after Plessy v. Ferguson.
The cartoon portrays a black man whose skin color was much darker than Homer Plessy, who was only one-eighth black. Do you think Plessy’s skin color is the most menacing aspect of this cartoon? Why or why not? (found in The Age of Jim Crow)
Negro Expulsion from Railway Car (1856) – The Rail Conductor is expeling a black man with skin color much darker than Plessy from train with a white woman with a child looking on.
Should counties and parishes claim these lynching memorials today?
What do counties risk if they acknowledge these lynchings? What do they risk if they do not acknowledge them?