Adriane Ruggiero – författare

During the Reconstruction era, the United States attempted to rebuild itself after the end of both slavery and the Civil War. Despite some successes by Congress to secure the rights for newly freed African Americans through civil rights acts and constitutional amendments, racial conflicts plagued the South. Northerners believed the only way to resolve this was to leave the Southerners to manage their own affairs. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South, officially ending Reconstruction. The consequences of this, however, would echo throughout U.S. history, ushering in decades of Jim Crow laws and segregation. In this book, students will read primary-source materials from presidents, congressmen, white Northerners and Southerners, and African Americans. These accounts offer students the opportunity to get a full picture of the Reconstruction era in America.

The stock market crash of 1929 triggered the worst economic crisis in U.S. history, the Great Depression. After Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president in 1933, he implemented the New Deal, a series of federal programs designed to ease unemployment and bolster the economy. These programs received mixed responses. The U.S. economy would ultimately continue to suffer until World War II started in 1939, when American industries were revitalized as they produced planes, ships, and weapons. In this book, students will read primary-source materials about the crash, the struggles of the American people, and the programs that helped pull the country out of the Great Depression.