Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2020 i Cobblestone American History and Current Events for Kids and Children

The death and destruction that took place during the American Civil War (1861–1865) was staggering. An estimated 720,000 people died. Cities, farms, and homes were ruined. The devastation made people wonder: After four years of war, how could Northerners and Southerners ever live and work together again? And what about the 4 million former enslaved people? How would their freedom change their lives personally and life in the South generally? Between 1865 and 1877, the nation struggled to find answers to those questions. Those years became known as the Reconstruction era. The war had ended in a victory for the Union and Northerners, but President Abraham Lincoln did not want to punish the South. He hoped to find a way to heal the nation and lead it forward. Lincoln’s vision…

The trouble began in the summer of 1865. President Andrew Johnson had begun to implement his own version of Reconstruction while Congress was in recess. He quickly invited former Confederate states back into the Union and pardoned scores of their former leaders. He also refused to impose Black suffrage on the Southern states. The Radical Republicans in Congress were horrified. Thaddeus Stevens, the most influential Radical, fumed in his home state of Pennsylvania. How dare the president begin Reconstruction without Congress? Stevens would become one of Johnson’s most powerful enemies. When Congress returned to Washington, D.C., in December 1865, the Radical Republicans were ready. Their first step was to refuse seats to the Southern legislators whom Johnson had welcomed back to the U.S. Capitol. Then in February 1866, the Radicals…

In December 1865, six young men living in Pulaski, Tennessee, founded a social club. The men were college-educated friends from prominent families. They had served as Confederate officers in the Civil War (1861–1865). They name they settled on for their group was kuklos (Greek for “circle”) with the addition of “Klan” for pizzazz. Thus was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) born. Members wore costumes, such as a hood and flowing robe of any color. They communicated via children’s whistles as they carried out their nightly pranks and initiation rituals. As the Klan grew, it took a sinister turn. It developed into a terrorist organization dedicated to white supremacy and violence. By April 1867, former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest ruled as the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. The Klan’s…

What are civil rights? Civil rights are all the benefits to which people are entitled because of their status as citizens of a country. They might include the right to fair treatment by an employer, a school, the police, and the government. They protect the right to live and travel wherever one chooses. They guarantee the right to vote. Civil rights laws commit the federal government to upholding those rights. A significant achievement of the Reconstruction era was the recognition of the federal government’s duty to protect individual citizens’ civil rights. It took almost 100 years for the government to accept that duty. Reconstruction tested the resolve of the U.S. government to find a way to protect the rights of African Americans against unequal treatment in the states. Congress passed…

P resident Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. But the news that enslaved people living in Confederate states were free did not reach Texas until June 19, 1865—two and a half years later. That’s when Union major general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, a city on the eastern coast of Texas, and announced the news. Many Confederate Texan plantation owners and planters who may have known about the proclamation did not let enslaved people know they were free. Once the proclamation was public, the news spread like wildfire to the 200,000 enslaved people living in Texas. Their lives changed overnight. They had dreamed of freedom for years, and they vowed never to forget June 19, or Juneteenth, as it came to be known. Today’s Juneteenth/Freedom Day/Emancipation…

This month’s mystery hero was born into slavery in Virginia in 1841. But he had a slightly different experience than many other enslaved children. Our hero’s father was the white owner of the plantation. That fact gave our hero certain privileges. He was taught to read and write at a time when educating slaves was unusual—and illegal. But he also experienced the cruel treatment that other enslaved people endured. At age eight, he was sent to pick cotton in the field. It was a difficult job. Field slaves were poorly treated and often whipped. The story of how our hero became a free man is not clear. One version is that his father freed him and set up him up as an apprentice to learn a trade. Another version claims…

Nineteenth-century cartoonist Thomas Nast was a lifelong Republican. But in the 1870s, during the Reconstruction era, he grew frustrated with politics. He used his editorial cartoons to comment on the two major political parties of the day: the Democratic and the Republican. The donkey had become linked with a Democratic politician—Andrew Jackson—in 1828. That association kind of stuck. So, Nast used the donkey (or jackass) to symbolize a Democratic politician or the Democratic party in his work. And he chose the large, slow-moving elephant as a symbol for a Republican politician or the Republican party. It didn’t take long for other cartoonists to follow Nast’s concept. The rest, as they say, is history. The Republican party has officially adopted the elephant as its symbol. The Democratic party identifies itself with…

African Americans often still face unequal treatment under the law, sometimes with deadly consequences. Because of a legacy of racial discrimination, they also have fewer resources and opportunities. To learn more, COBBLESTONE spoke with Tiffany Dena Loftin. She heads the Youth and College Division of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Since its founding in 1909, the NAACP has worked tirelessly for equal rights. The immediate spark for many protests in 2020 came from police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed African Americans. Many other issues also are at stake in the Black Lives Matter movement. How are current problems rooted in America’s history? We are looking at the residue of a history that nobody wants to clean up. There is a long…

Many countries have suffered the horrors of a civil war. Here are three of them. Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War began in 1936. Backed by Nazi Germany, Nationalist Spanish rebels fought against Spain’s Republican government. In 1939, the government surrendered, and the Nationalists took control. Their leader was General Francisco Franco. Under his dictatorship, thousands of former Republicans were imprisoned or executed. Many others fled the country. Five months later, World War II (1939–1945) broke out in Europe. Still recovering from its civil war, Spain couldn’t afford to get involved in another conflict. Franco managed to keep his country neutral in the war. His reign lasted until his death in 1975. Since then, the country has been a democracy. SIERRA LEONEAN CIVIL WAR From 1991 to 2002, the…

Across the South, many white people refused to accept the legitimacy of the Republican party and Black voter participation in the 1870s. In numerous states, white Democrats went on the offensive against their Black and white Republican opponents. They engaged in fraud at the ballot box, “stealing” elections from their opponents. They also whipped up racial fears during campaigns to swing white voters to their cause. They formed armed militias and organizations that operated outside the law, such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the White League. These groups intimidated, attacked, and terrorized Black and white Republican voters. In Mississippi, white people employed all three approaches during the election campaign of 1875. Hundreds of African Americans were killed in election-related violence. The terrorizing resulted in a Democratic victory at…

African American activist and writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper used the spoken and written word to champion racial equality. And she was active at a time when women and African Americans were not equal citizens in the United States. Born in 1825, Frances grew up as a free Black child in the slave state of Maryland. But she always felt as if the “shadow of slavery hung dark over the home of my childhood.” She witnessed the misery of chained captives of all ages being marched through the streets of Baltimore. She knew of the slave pens where enslaved people were held until public auctions brutally split up families. Orphaned at age three, Frances grew up in the crowded household of her uncle William Watkins Jr., an outspoken abolitionist. Frances…

Since 1989, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has worked to address racial and economic injustice. As part of that mission, EJI has created memorials and spaces to help Americans learn more about the legacy of slavery, lynchings, and racial segregation. In 2018, EJI opened a new museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The site consists of several locations within a one-mile walk through the city’s streets. The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is an indoor museum. A pavilion near the museum serves as a welcome center. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is an outdoor space on six acres. Visitors follow a self-guided path that dramatically acknowledges the thousands of African Americans lynched by white mobs between 1877 and 1950. Across the street from the memorial is a center.…

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