Browse Collections (59 total)

The Rollin Sisters

Free born wealthy sisters from Charleston, South Carolina who became abolitionists, writers, teachers, doctors, suffragettes and organizers in the…

Elizabeth Ware Pearson

A Massachusetts-born, White abolitionist writer and educator who served as a teacher to newly freed people during the Port Royal Experiment in…

William Beverly Nash

A formerly enslaved Virginia barber and show shine man who became a South Carolina Senator (R-SC) during Reconstruction.


Freedmen's Bureau

A federal agency that was created to provide aid to displaced Southerners, including newly freed people, during and after the Civil War.


Robert Smalls

A formerly enslaved South Carolina man, Union Army officer, Congressman (R-SC) and businessman. Known for commandeering a Confederate gunboat during…

Charlotte Forten Grimke

A free-born Pennsylvania abolitionist, writer, storyteller, poet and teacher. Recruited to teach newly freed people in the Port Royal Experiment in…

Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction Plan

Highlights of Johnson's plan for rebuilding the American South and unifying the nation after the Civil War.


Abraham Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan & the Wade Davis Bill

Highlights of Lincoln's plan to rebuild the American South and unify the nation after the Civil War.


Frederick Douglass

A Maryland born enslaved man who escaped slavery and became a public orator and writer known for his prominent role in the anti-slavery…

Forty Acres and a Mule

An unrealized promise included in Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 (January 16, 1865) that allotted land and…

Juneteenth

Commemorates the day Union Army General Gordon Granger delivered General Order No. 3 - decreeing enslaved people free - to the citizens of…