Instructions: Your teacher will assign you a role. Please mark your parts, and
read through all of them. Everyone speaks at the ALL parts. Ask about any
words you don’t know how to say.
ALL: Reconstruction changed our government and Constitution.
1: The Constitution is the supreme law of our land.
2: It can only be changed by amending it.
11: Two-thirds of both houses of Congress must vote yes to a new
amendment.
3: Then the states must ratify, or agree to add, the amendment before it can
be added to the Constitution.
8: Three-fourth of the states must ratify the amendment for it to become part
of the Constitution.
13: Three amendments, called the Reconstruction amendments, changed lives
for the better.
ALL: In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution,
which forbids slavery in the United States.
14: This amendment gave freedom to people to all slaves in the United States.
ALL: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
4: “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted,”
ALL: “shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.”
5: The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery across the United States
12: But it did not give the freed slaves the same rights as other Americans
10: For example, slaves were now free, but they did not have the right to vote.
7: State laws, called Black Codes, still limited the rights of African Americans,
1: even after the Thirteenth Amendment was passed.
ALL: In 1868, the federal government passed the Fourteenth Amendment.
9: It established citizenship for African-Americans
6: and protected every person born in the United States
11: from any state laws that took away their rights as United States citizens.
ALL: “ All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, “
3: “are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. “
16: “No State shall make or enforce any law “
8: “which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States; “
9: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,”
ALL: “without due process of law;”
12: “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction”
ALL: “the equal protection of the laws.”
4: President Andrew Johnson did not like the Fourteenth Amendment because
it took power away from the states.
15: He vetoed, or said no, to this amendment.
3: A two-thirds majority of Congress passed the amendment over Johnson’s
veto.
5: It became federal law without Johnson’s approval.
ALL: In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment, gave African-American men over the
age of twenty-one the right to vote.
16: In the next election, African-Americans were able to run for office for the
first time.
ALL: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.”
8: “Previous condition of servitude” meant that States could not keep the
freedmen from voting just because they had been slaves.
15: The right to vote was so important that the fifteenth amendment
specifically guaranteed it.
ALL: Although the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were designed to protect
the rights of African Americans, they only worked in the South as long as
military troops were there to enforce them.
16: None of these amendments dealt with the land issue –
2: none provided land to the freemen,
5: or forced Southerners to sell land to the freemen if they had the money to
buy it.
13: Southern states continued to limit the rights of freedmen through the use
of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws.
12: Once Reconstruction ended, and the troops were gone
9: So was protection for any rights for African Americans.