Reconstruction Era Documentary

 

A photo showing a ruined city street, lined with ruined buildings and debris.

Reconstruction was a devastating time period, and its collapse still affects us today. The achievements of this era led to devastating events, because Southerners could not grasp the concept of Black and white people living and functioning together. A hundred years after emancipation, Black people were still fighting for their rights.

A Moment of Freedom

When news rippled out from the village of Appomattox, Black people were free. 

Slaves themselves helped make this happen. Some were caught by the army, some defied their owners, and African Americans joined the military.

The prayers of generations were being answered. 

Families torn apart began reconnecting, placing ads in newspapers.

Still, the end of the Civil War brought more questions than answers. 

What does freedom mean?

Competing Visions

Reconstruction simply meant restoring the rebel states to the Union, but North and South saw it differently.

Two days after Appomattox, Lincoln spoke about Black men being intelligent and deserving of jobs. Hours after his death, Andrew Johnson was elected.

Johnson believed the planter class was at fault and that poor white Southerners were the victims. Frederick Douglass said, “He is no friend of the Black.”

The basis of being truly free was owning land. The Freedmen’s Bureau, which was about treating Black people fairly, had a small budget but plenty of land. 

Meanwhile, the wealthy came to Johnson for pardons, and he said he’d keep the population “under control.” The United States had the opportunity to make amends, but the country failed. 

Fighting Back

The Black Codes forced Black people to sign labor contracts, creating as little change from slavery to freedom as possible. Children were taken from Black families because their parents “cannot take care of them,” and parents had no say.

The Ku Klux Klan was created to “keep them in check.” In Memphis, white men hunted down and killed Black people on sight.

Congress Takes Control

Congress took control of Reconstruction without calling a single Southerner. The 14th Amendment declared that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen and that no state can deny any person due process.

No state would ratify it, so military reconstruction divided the South into five districts. Rebel states had to adopt new constitutions and ratify the amendment.

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AI DISCLOSURE: Claude AI was used in a limited way to only organize my notes into a short blog post. I told the AI to not add any new information and to make the blog post with only the information I gave it from my notes in class. 

EOTO: Positive Outlook

 

Abraham Lincoln is signing the 13th Amendment while others watch. 

In 1865, America faced a question few nations ever have to answer: what does freedom look like after a war fought over slavery? 

Within five years, the country responded by rewriting its Constitution three times. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments carried a hopeful vision that the nation could finally live up to its own ideals.

Freedom: The 13th Amendment 

Ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States. That mattered because the Emancipation Proclamation, for all its power, had limits. 

According to the National Archives, Lincoln recognized that his proclamation depended on Union military victory, so a constitutional amendment was needed to secure abolition for good.

In other words, freedom stopped being a wartime measure and became permanent law.

Citizenship: The 14th Amendment

Three years later, the 14th Amendment answered the next question: free, but as what? 

It granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and required every state to honor due process and equal protection of the laws.

This directly overturned the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, which had declared in 1857 that enslaved people were not citizens. 

For the first time, the Constitution told the states that they could not simply take people’s rights away.

Power: The 15th Amendment

Ratified on February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment declared that the right to vote could not be denied because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 

The National Archives notes that to abolitionists and Radical Republicans, it appeared to be the fulfillment of every promise made to African Americans.

The results were visible almost immediately. 

On February 25, 1870, visitors in the gallery burst into applause as Hiram Revels of Mississippi entered the Senate chamber to take his oath as the first African American senator.

Across the South, Black men were elected to local, state, and federal offices. 

Drawing on historian Eric Foner’s research, Facing History and Ourselves documents roughly 1,500 Black officeholders during Reconstruction, and historians estimate the true number is closer to 2,000.

Their presence made a difference. 

An economic study summarized by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Black officials broadly agreed on land policy and public schools, and that places with more Black officeholders saw gains in Black literacy.

A Promise Worth Remembering 

The story did not end neatly. 

The National Archives acknowledges that the 15th Amendment was really just another step in a struggle for equality that lasted more than a century, with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally removing the remaining barriers to voting.

Yet that is part of what makes these amendments so powerful. They set standards in the nation’s highest law that later generations could point to and demand that America meet.

In just five years, Americans moved from freedom to citizenship to political power, and they proved that the Constitution can be changed to expand liberty. 

That is a hopeful legacy worth celebrating.

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AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used heavily on this assignment. I put in a detailed prompt into Claude AI to write a 500-600 word blog post about the three, reconstruction era amendments. I asked AI to include embedded links to reliable sources. 

GONE WITH THE WIND (REACTION POST)

 

Scarlett O'Hara is sitting while two young men try to catch her attention

Let's talk about the characters of this film. 

Scarlett O'Hara, a young beautiful woman in the south, is the main character of the film. In my opinion, she is selfish, manipulative and has always gotten what she wants without any problem. 

Her entire identity is built around being the most desired woman in the community, and she flirts with every man in her sight despite not being interested in them whatsoever. 

There is only one man she wants: Ashley Wilkes. Scarlett cannot have Ashley, and Scarlett is not willing to let him go. 

Ashley gets married to another woman, and throughout the movie, it becomes more obvious that Scarlett likes Ashley for what he symbolizes not for who he actually is. 

There is one man in particular that seeks interest in Scarlett: Rhett Butler. 

He is an outsider from Charleston who is blunt and does not fit in with the normal crowd. 

In this film, he is the realist, while talking to the other men, he states blankly that there was no winning against the North - which made the others angry, but it was true. 

He actually did not believe in the cause at all - but he was making money from it, and he got involved. 

I think the reason Rhett finds himself drawn to Scarlett is because he can see himself in her, and he sees right through her helpless act. 

He goes to her and points out the facts and tells her what he sees - which is that she didn't need to pretend to be a lady, and that she can be independent, and most importantly, he tells her that her love for Ashley is a fantasy. 

Another character worth mentioning is Mammy, the enslaved house servant at the O'Hara household. 

Mammy was fierce and stern - she was not afraid to tell Scarlett how it really was. 

Similarly to Rhett, Mammy sees right through Scarlett, but she wants to keep the act convincing. 

She consistently scolds Scarlett and holds her own throughout the film, and she is one of the most vivid characters in the entirety of the film. 

Each of these characters show hidden meaning within the film - and send important messages to the viewer.

In my eyes, Scarlett represents the South itself. We see her suffering, her hunger, and the loss of her home - much like what the entirety of the south is going through. 

To the viewer this brings the emotional aspect of the movie - and it puts the perspective of the damage the war caused for the South

While Scarlett chooses to rebel, her rebellion still has its limits. She tends to break social expectations, but what she wants still correlates with what society expects: money, status and a husband). 

She still represents rebellion in some way but not in a way that challenges society. 

Through Rhett, I noticed that the film was critiquing Southern arrogance, not the society itself. The Southerners had a lot of pride, but Rhett was brave enough to challenge them knowing they will lose but he never said it was wrong, so the morality aspect is still unchallenged.