This inquiry focuses on the ways in which African Americans have been able to construct their own freedom in the face of injustice, violence, and white backlash following emancipation and in the era of Reconstruction and beyond.
The questions, tasks, and sources in this inquiry ask students to examine the political, social, and economic successes African Americans were able to create for themselves, as well as the social, political, and institutional barriers that African Americans had to overcome in order to achieve these successes.
The first supporting question asks, “How did African Americans take advantage of social, economic, and political opportunities after the Civil War?” The purpose of this question is to encourage students to think of the many ways in which newly freed African Americans were able to innovate and use their own agency in multiple facets of life to take full advantage of their earned freedom.
