Movement of resistance · 1865–1877
Reconstruction & Black Political Power
The brief era of Black voting, officeholding, and constitutional citizenship after the Civil War.
On the timeline
- January 16, 1865Special Field Order No. 15 — "40 acres"
Sherman sets aside coastal land for freed families — a promise soon revoked.
- March 3, 1865The Freedmen's Bureau
A federal agency to aid the formerly enslaved with food, schools, and labor contracts.
- April 9, 1866The Civil Rights Act of 1866
The first federal law to define citizenship and affirm equal rights regardless of race.
- March 2, 1867The Reconstruction Acts
Congress divides the South into military districts and requires new constitutions with Black male suffrage — opening the door to Black political power.
- January 14, 1868South Carolina's Black-majority convention
For the first time, a Black-majority convention (73 of 124 delegates) writes a state constitution — among the most democratic of its day.
- July 9, 1868The 14th Amendment
Citizenship and equal protection are written into the Constitution.
- February 3, 1870The 15th Amendment
The vote is guaranteed regardless of race; Black men begin electing Black officials across the South.
- February 25, 1870Hiram Revels, first Black US Senator
Revels of Mississippi becomes the first African American in the US Senate during Reconstruction.
- December 12, 1870Joseph Rainey, first Black US Representative
Rainey of South Carolina becomes the first Black member of the US House.
- April 20, 1871The Ku Klux Klan Act
Federal law empowers the government to suppress Klan terror in the South.
- March 1, 1875The Civil Rights Act of 1875
A federal ban on racial discrimination in public accommodations — later gutted by the courts.
Resources
Federal records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
The museum's exhibition on Reconstruction through a Black lens.
Black political ascendancy after the war and the violent backlash that ended it.
Documents ~2,000 previously uncounted Reconstruction-era lynchings.
A digital archive of the 19th-century Black organizing conventions.
NPS overview tied to the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park.
Du Bois''s landmark revisionist history of Reconstruction and Black political agency.
Pulitzer-winning history of the 1898 white-supremacist coup in Wilmington, NC.
History of Reconstruction''s overthrow and the rise of Jim Crow.
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.
- suppressed (incoming)·EventThe Compromise of 1877 ends Reconstruction
The bargain that settled the 1876 election withdrew federal troops and abandoned Reconstruction to "Redemption."
- enabled (incoming)·EventThe Reconstruction Acts
Military Reconstruction opened the brief era of Black political power.