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Hello class and welcome to U.S. American History. Today I will be giving a very brief preview
on our upcoming lesson on reconstruction. Reconstruction was a very important time in
our nation's history. However, reconstruction was also a very hard time for people living
in American and in particular, *** African Americans.
One of the best ways to depict the hard times of reconstruction is through primary source
documents and some of the best were political cartoons. Political cartoons where the ig
of its day. They often were very satirical and negative but they were also informative.
In this first political cartoon we see a member of the K.K.K. and a member of the White League
shaking hands. You can see that they are terrorizing the black family that is quivering beneath
them. This will be one of the themes that we discuss in the section. The words "worse
than slavery" are rite underneath some skull and bones. We can also see an African American
man being hung and a school house being burned to the ground.
Another important aspect of reconstruction was the freedman's bureau. In this political
cartoon we can see how one cartoonist depicts the bureau as "as an agency to keep the ***
in idleness." We also can see an African American seemingly laying out in the sun while a white
man is chopping wood. Just through these two primary sources we
gain a wealth of knowledge about reconstruction and can start to outline some of the major
events that take place during reconstruction. Thank you.