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Lesson #1: Reconstruction (on Blackboard)
Read:
The American Yawp, Chapter 15. Reconstruction.
Assignment:
Analyzing a Written Document (see Blackboard)
Primary Source Discussion Readings:
Mississippi Black Codes, 1865.
Jourdon Anderson Writes His Former Master, 1865.
The discussion this week begins with an analysis of the following primary source selections for the chapter on Reconstruction.
Read Mississippi Black Codes, 1865.
Read Jourdon Anderson Writes His Former Master, 1865.
Read the text of the Mississippi Black Codes closely. In 2016, filmmaker Ava DuVernay released her documentary The 13th, which examines how the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution carried within its short text the seeds for the eventual mass incarceration of recently freed slaves, thus creating a way for southern whites and slaveholders to maintain a system as close to slavery as possible.
1. Pick out one part of the Codes that strikes you as problematic, in that its main justification would be to criminalize the activities of former slaves in defending their freedom, and analyze it.
2. Do you agree with the critiques of many Black Lives Matter activists, and Ana DuVernay, that the policing of communities of color in the United States is still informed by the racial assumptions present before the Civil War, and which we can find embedded in these Codes?
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Resources for Lesson Review:
Flashcard Review of Terms from this lesson
