Reconstruction: America After the Civil War

Experience the aftermath of the Civil War. African Americans who had played a crucial role in the war now grapple with the terms and implications of Reconstruction and their hard-won freedom.

Discover how post-Civil War America was a new world. For African Americans, support for their social, economic and political gains did not last. The 1876 presidential election deals Reconstruction a blow as the forces of white supremacy ascend.

Explore 1877-1896, with the rise of Jim Crow and the undermining of Reconstruction’s legal and political legacy. Southern sharecropping, convict leasing, disfranchisement and lynchings drew a “color line” limiting opportunities and destroying lives.

Learn how as America entered the 1900s, Southern propaganda manipulated the story of the Civil War and racist imagery saturated popular culture. African Americans fought back using artistic expression to put forward a “New Negro” for a new century.