ABSTRACT
Students participate in a structured academic controversy to consider whether reconstruction was a success or a failure. They also examine the impact of reconstruction on African Americans in the South. Hold up two large signs, one labeled “reunification” and the other “equality.” Ask students to share with a partner their knowledge about how these two words are connected to reconstruction. Many African Americans continued to be disenfranchised through means such as poll taxes and literacy tests. The passing of the voting rights act of 1965 was finally effective in ensuring all citizens had the ability to register and vote without intimidation or restriction. Most African Americans in the South were still denied the basic rights of citizens through such means as sharecropping, which, in effect, indebted the former slaves to the landowners who were often their former slave owners and plantation owners.
