ABS Language Arts/Social Sciences

Introductory essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones for The New York Times Magazine 1619 Project.

"Voices and Faces from the Collection." The narrative excerpts presented here are a small sample of the wealth of stories available in this online collection. These narratives provide an invaluable first-person account of slavery and the individuals it affected.

The article by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., discusses how Reconstruction, the period in U.S. history that followed the Civil War, still shapes the world. Topics discussed include a key lesson of Reconstruction that African Americans never surrendered to white supremacy, the rollback of Reconstruction, and how the process of dehumanization triggered a resistance movement.

In this essay, the author describes the ways in which the Civil War and 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments guaranteed African Americans certain rights, but how those rights were quickly reversed due to intimidation and the Jim Crow system.