Organize the Evidence for Thinking through Sources 16

Document Links:

Document 16.1 HENRY GRADY, The New South (1890)

Document 16.2 Testimony of North Carolina Industrial Workers (1887)

Document 16.3 Sharecropper’s Contract (1882)

Document 16.4 Mississippi Constitution (1890)

Document 16.5 JUSTICE HENRY BILLINGS BROWN, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Organize the Evidence for Thinking through Sources 16

The following exercises provide an opportunity to use the sources collectively to respond to a guiding question.

Guiding Question: How did the American South reshape its economic, political, and social institutions after the federal government’s formal withdrawal from the region at the end of Reconstruction in 1877?

Instructions

Below are three topics that might find a place in organizing an essay responding to the guiding question. This exercise asks you to identify which sources would provide relevant evidence for that topic. Select the best answers for each question. Choose ALL that apply. Click the “submit” button for each question to turn in your work.

Question 16.16

1. Which of the sources provides specific evidence about the economic changes that took place in the South in the decades after Reconstruction? Choose ALL that apply.

R6Xlb9MAHXF7O4A0MNT1YQ== Document 16.1: Henry Grady, The New South
R6Xlb9MAHXF7O4A0MNT1YQ== Document 16.2: Testimony of North Carolina Industrial Workers
R6Xlb9MAHXF7O4A0MNT1YQ== Document 16.3: Sharecropper’s Contract
kcVtUDKfaIWTKrqEI7di7A== Document 16.4: Mississippi Constitution
kcVtUDKfaIWTKrqEI7di7A== Document 16.5: Justice Henry Billings Brown, Plessy v. Ferguson
Correct: Document 16.1: Grady describes the changes that took place in the South as it began to industrialize in the late nineteenth century. Document 16.2: The mill workers describe their experiences in an industrialized workplace in the late nineteenth century. Document 16.3: The contract lays out the legal terms of the sharecropping system, which took the place of plantation slavery after the Civil War.
Incorrect: Document 16.4: The constitution provides evidence about the South’s post-Reconstruction political structures. Document 16.5: Brown lays out the legal arguments that reflected and supported the creation of Jim Crow segregation in the South’s social and political life.

Question 16.17

2. Which of these documents provides specific evidence about how the southern states limited African Americans’ access to legal and political institutions after the end of Reconstruction? Choose ALL that apply.

kcVtUDKfaIWTKrqEI7di7A== Document 16.1: Henry Grady, The New South
kcVtUDKfaIWTKrqEI7di7A== Document 16.2: Testimony of North Carolina Industrial Workers
kcVtUDKfaIWTKrqEI7di7A== Document 16.3: Sharecropper’s Contract
R6Xlb9MAHXF7O4A0MNT1YQ== Document 16.4: Mississippi Constitution
kcVtUDKfaIWTKrqEI7di7A== Document 16.5: Justice Henry Billings Brown, Plessy v. Ferguson
Correct: Document 16.4: The constitution spells out the laws that limited African Americans’ access to suffrage, jury service, and equal marriage rights.
Incorrect: Document 16.1: Grady focuses on economic changes that took place in the South after Reconstruction. Document 16.2: The workers’ testimony focuses on their treatment within textile mills in the South. Document 16.3: The contract lays out the rules that regulated a sharecropper’s economic rights and obligations in relation to his landlord. Document 16.5: Brown spells out the Supreme Court’s views on social segregation in the South.

Question 16.18

3. Which of the following documents provides specific evidence about the ways the southern states institutionalized social inequality for African Americans after the end of Reconstruction? Choose ALL that apply.

R6Xlb9MAHXF7O4A0MNT1YQ== Document 16.1: Henry Grady, The New South
kcVtUDKfaIWTKrqEI7di7A== Document 16.2: Testimony of North Carolina Industrial Workers
kcVtUDKfaIWTKrqEI7di7A== Document 16.3: Sharecropper’s Contract
R6Xlb9MAHXF7O4A0MNT1YQ== Document 16.4: Mississippi Constitution
R6Xlb9MAHXF7O4A0MNT1YQ== Document 16.5: Justice Henry Billings Brown, Plessy v. Ferguson
Correct: Document 16.1: Grady attempts to reassure potential investors that whites are in charge in the South, that blacks are inferior, and that the “race problem” is improving. Document 16.4: The constitution demonstrates the strategies Mississippi used to deny blacks access to suffrage, jury service, and equal marriage rights. Document 16.5: Brown’s argument that “separate but equal” segregation was acceptable both reflected and shaped the South’s system of Jim Crow segregation.
Incorrect: Document 16.2: The industrial workers focus on their experiences in the workplace. Document 16.3: The contract lays out the legal and economic relationships between sharecroppers and their landlords.

Thinking through Sources forExploring American Histories, Volume 2Printed Page 128