The First Vote: Returning Voter | Reconstruction 360

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 Colored Monitor Union Club. When a local election was held about a month later, on May 25, 1865, members of the club came out to vote in a demonstration of political will.

Standards

• 8.4.CC Analyze continuities and change in the African American experience in the period of Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras within South Carolina.
• USHC.2.CX Contextualize the perspectives on the role of the federal government in securing natural rights during the period 1830–1877.