Step into a working farm in South Carolina in 1865, where an amazing reversal of labor and land ownership has taken place. Freedpeople are working their own farm, producing crops, making money. But then a visitor appears on the horizon, and one of the most painful, lasting chapters in American history is about to unfold.
Reconstruction 360 uses a 360 degree video platform as a storytelling device that lets the audience step inside pivotal Reconstruction events. By clicking on icons within the 360 video the user can access short documentaries that offer the perspectives of multiple characters, historians and descendants. Reconstruction 360 also includes lesson plans, primary documents and curriculum standards. This module, 40 Acres and a Mule, focuses on the theme of land and labor at the close of the Civil War.
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Historian Kate Masur explains the origins of 40 Acres and a Mule, a famous phrase that many have heard but may not fully understand. It originated in the early days of Reconstruction, when General...
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Reconstruction 360 is built on a 360 degree video platform that features a reenactment set on a farm in 1865. The reenactment was shot at Freewoods Farm, a living farm museum in the Freewoods...
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Enslaved people did not have full rights to their children, or control over their lives. When freedom came, parents could take an active role in the upbringing of their children, leading to stronger...
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Freed blacks in the United States believed the government had a plan to distribute land to them, and that they were entitled to it. General Sherman’s Field Order 15 gave them small plots of farmland...
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The Freedmen’s Bureau had responsibility for every aspect of the lives of formerly enslaved people, and was in charge of land that came under federal control during and after the Civil War. In 1872...
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Under slavery many African-American women had to work as field hands, or in the slave owners’ homes, doing domestic chores and raising the white children. Freedom meant that black women became...
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After the war, the South, and the nation, faced the question of how to make the transition from slave to free labor. Most former slave owners insisted that they should get their land back and maintain...