AP African American Studies — Reconstruction to the Present flashcards
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AP African American Studies Units 3–4: Reconstruction and its overthrow, Jim Crow, uplift and organizations, the Great Migrations and New Negro arts, the civil rights and Black Power movements, Black arts, Black feminism and politics since 1970.
Learn deck · part of AP African American Studies · written against: College Board AP African American Studies Course and Exam Description (2024–25 course framework). Updated 2026-10-10.
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What did the Freedmen's Bureau do, and why was its impact limited?Created in 1865, the Bureau distributed food and medical care, supervised labor contracts, ran courts and helped found schools for formerly enslaved people. It was understaffed, often sided with planters on labor terms, and Congress shut most of it down by 1872.The Practice of Freedom › Reconstruction and Its Overthrow
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What was Special Field Order No. 15, and what happened to the land it granted?Issued by General William T. Sherman in January 1865, it set aside coastal land in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida for freed families in plots of up to forty acres, the origin of the phrase 'forty acres and a mule'. President Andrew Johnson pardoned former Confederates and, from late 1865, restored most of the land to them, with evictions continuing into 1866.The Practice of Freedom › Reconstruction and Its Overthrow
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How did the Black Codes of 1865–66 try to recreate slavery-like control?Southern legislatures required freedpeople to sign annual labor contracts, punished 'vagrancy' (being unemployed) with fines or forced labor, let courts bind Black children as apprentices, and barred Black people from many jobs and from owning guns.The Practice of Freedom › Reconstruction and Its Overthrow
Why it matters: Northern outrage helped launch Congressional Reconstruction. -
Who were the first African Americans to serve in Congress, and how widespread was Black officeholding during Reconstruction?Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first Black US senator in 1870, and Joseph Rainey of South Carolina the first Black member of the House that year; Blanche K. Bruce later served a full Senate term. Well over 1,500 Black men held office during Reconstruction, from sheriff to lieutenant governor.The Practice of Freedom › Reconstruction and Its Overthrow
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How did sharecropping and the crop-lien system trap Black farmers?Lacking land, families farmed a white owner's plot in exchange for a share of the crop (sharecropping). They bought supplies on credit against the coming harvest (crop lien) at high interest, so low cotton prices left many permanently in debt and unable to leave.The Practice of Freedom › Reconstruction and Its Overthrow
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What was the Négritude movement, and how was it connected to the Harlem Renaissance?Négritude was a movement in literature and politics, begun in Paris in the 1930s and active into the 1950s, in which Black writers from France's colonies, led by Aimé Césaire of Martinique, Léopold Senghor of Senegal and Léon-Gontran Damas, took pride in African culture and rejected France's demand that colonized peoples assimilate. They drew inspiration from Harlem Renaissance writers such as McKay and Hughes.Movements and Debates › Black Arts and Black Studies
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What did Executive Order 9981 (1948) do?President Truman ordered equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces regardless of race, leading to desegregation of the military, carried out largely during and just after the Korean War. Pressure from A. Philip Randolph's campaign against Jim Crow in the military helped force it.Movements and Debates › The Civil Rights Movement
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What legal strategy did Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall use before Brown?The NAACP's lawyers first attacked segregation in graduate and law schools, where states plainly could not offer equal separate facilities, winning cases such as Missouri ex rel. Gaines (1938) and Sweatt v. Painter (1950). These precedents set up a direct challenge to segregated public schools.Movements and Debates › The Civil Rights Movement
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Why did Emmett Till's murder in 1955 galvanize the civil rights movement?The fourteen-year-old from Chicago was abducted and killed in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman, and an all-white jury acquitted his killers. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral, and photographs in Jet magazine forced the nation to confront the brutality.Movements and Debates › The Civil Rights Movement
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What roles did Jo Ann Robinson and Claudette Colvin play in Montgomery before the boycott?Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in March 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat, months before Rosa Parks. When Parks was arrested, Jo Ann Robinson and the Women's Political Council printed and distributed tens of thousands of leaflets overnight calling for the boycott.Movements and Debates › The Civil Rights Movement
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About these cards
Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Topic outline follows the College Board AP African American Studies course framework in the Course and Exam Description (effective Fall 2024), Units 3–4; used as an outline only, no text copied.
- OpenStax U.S. History, consulted as a reference; no text copied.
- Facts checked against the National Archives' Milestone Documents, Library of Congress primary-source collections and Oyez case summaries; reference only, no text copied.
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