History & Culture

Learn about the development of Black post-emancipation schools in the South as part of the legacy of Black communities’ dedication and commitment to ensuring civil rights. Ten case studies highlight Reconstruction Era education stories and sites in and around national parks.

The legacy of Reconstruction is filled with triumph and trials, gains and losses. Though the era resulted in the dawn of the Jim Crow era, it did see a rise in Black political and social representation and power. Read more about the Reconstruction era in this timeline following the history of civil rights in America.

Today the Antietam National Battlefield is an idyllic rural landscape, dotted with lovely old farms and groves of stately trees. For one day in 1862, it was hell on earth.

In the 1990s, the National Park Service and URS Greiner, Inc., conducted a survey to locate, identify, and inventory archeological sites within Antietam National Battlefield. This series is on research at three sites within the park — the Mary Locher/Alfred Poffenberger cabin, the North Woods, and the Mumma Farm — and presents a brief introduction to some of the archeological methods, techniques, and interpretations.

The Civil War showed the cracks in the loosely held peace between the North and South. As the end of slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation established a reason for African Americans to join the fight, the stage was set for African American men to fight for their own freedom and rights as citizens of America.

The story of African American’s fight for equality did not begin or end with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In the National Capital Area, dedicated activism and self-determination has been documented since the Revolutionary War through the present day. This series consists of six articles that outline distinct timelines of resistance and activism in the fight for freedom.

Women served disguised as male soldiers, they served as nurses, cooks, and laundresses. Women served in Ladies’ Relief Societies, in the U.S. Sanitary Commission, and in the U.S. Christian Commission. The Daughters of Charity, a Catholic religious order from Emmittsburg, Maryland, also responded in the aftermath of the battle. Many unnamed women from the Sharpsburg community helped care for the sick and wounded as well.

A brief overview of the Park Service Modern architectural style established during Mission 66.

During the Reconstruction Era, African Americans in the former slave-holding states saw education as an important step towards achieving equality, independence, and prosperity. As a result, they found ways to learn despite the many obstacles that poverty and white people placed in their path. African Americans’ commitment to education had lasting effects on the former slave-holding states.

In the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, newly freed African Americans faced monumental challenges to establish their own households, farm their own lands, establish community institutions and churches, and to pursue equal justice under the law in a period of racist violence. A new NPS report presents the story of the extraordinary accomplishments of rural African Americans in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.