Research Paper—Life of African Americans from the colonial period to Reconstruction
Your goal for this research project is to understand the transition in the lives of African Americans from slaves under the early colonists before American independence to free individuals in the aftermath of the Civil War in the Reconstruction era. You’ll analyze this transition in four (4) different “snapshots” of time: slavery in the colonies, slavery under the new
nation, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction. The focus is to see how the fight for freedom over nearly a century was a series of small steps forward that, even in the end, still left African Americans in almost the same position despite slavery
being abolished.
