Reconstruction 360 uses a 360 degree video platform as a storytelling device that lets the audience step inside pivotal Reconstruction events. By clicking on icons within the 360 video the user can access short documentaries that offer the perspectives of multiple characters, historians and descendants. Reconstruction 360 also includes lesson plans, curriculum standards and primary documents.
In this module, The First Vote, join a group of new African American voters at a polling station in Virginia in 1867. Black and white U.S. Army soldiers are serving as poll workers, since the state of Virginia is under federal military rule, and two Confederate Army veterans are not pleased.
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A New York music store owner named Samuel C. Jollie created a glass ballot box, bringing literal transparency to the voting process. Voters inserted ballots through a small hole on the top of the box...
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At the beginning of the Civil War, the federal government excluded Blacks from the army, but in 1862-63, as the need for soldiers grew, the government scrapped the prohibition and welcomed Black...
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These men represent white Southerners who fought for the Confederacy and are strongly opposed to the idea of Black men voting. Changes that Radical Reconstruction brought about met with vicious...
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Before the Civil War the majority of free Black people lived in the South, where they couldn’t testify in court, learn to read, or travel without restrictions. But they survived and thrived as...
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The wife of one of the Black voters has joined her husband for this historic event. Women saw enfranchisement of Black men as a gain for the entire race and encouraged men to adhere to the wishes of...
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This new voter has very little money or belongings, but he has gained his freedom. After passage of the Reconstruction Acts, thousands of politically energized freedmen, rich and poor, registered to...
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This man is one of the few African Americans who has already cast a ballot. In 1865, shortly before the end of the Civil War, a group of about a thousand Black men in Norfolk, Virginia formed the...
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At this polling station, U.S. Army soldiers are serving as poll workers, since the state of Virginia is under federal military rule. In 1867, the Radical Republicans, now in control of Congress...