Reconstruction Lesson: Black Codes, Backlash & the End, Grades 6-8

Can a change be a success and a failure at the same time? This lesson opens with that question, then asks students to judge Reconstruction with evidence. They learn how Southern lawmakers passed Black Codes to limit freedpeople's rights, how Congress answered with new laws, how violence and the Ku Klux Klan were used against Black voters (taught in two plain sentences from official sources, with no images and no Klan words quoted), and how Democrats took back Southern state governments.

What's inside

• 13 slides, with speaker notes on all 13
• Lesson plan, 2 pages
• Student reading, 2 pages, "How Reconstruction Ended"
• Student worksheet, 2 pages
• Answer key, 1 page
• Print-all PDF, 7 pages (lesson plan, reading, worksheet and answer key in one file)

Answer key included

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