Week 21: January 23 - 27

After finishing up our role play on the Sea Islands we'll explore the brief, but consequential years of Presidential Reconstruction. Through video, podcast, and readings we'll explore how President Johnson's policies and the initial white supremacist reaction to freedom effected Black people and how Black people fought for an alternative vision of what freedom — culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment. Lastly, we'll start a new role play at the end of the week that takes us through the historic conventions that occurred across the South starting in 1868. These gatherings of poor Black and white people rewrote the constitutions of the South and profoundly reshaped the direction of Reconstruction.