10 minutes
The history that built starting lines Slavery in law, Reconstruction as real democracy, Jim Crow as a system — not a mood.
What you’ll be able to do Identify the practical implication of “The history that built starting lines” and apply it to one live DHS decision connected to The Record. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: How should the team use the concept? Document a next step for The history that built starting lines: Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed. The Constitution named slavery. Later maps named credit. History here is law and policy, not a feeling. Why a DHS employee needs this, not as trivia If you do not know that Reconstruction included Black officeholding and that it was dismantled on purpose, you will think 1964 was the first try. If you do not know Jim Crow was a legal system blessed by the Supreme Court, you will think the past was only private meanness. Starting lines in wealth, housing, and who is believed were built in public.
In this lesson you will Place slavery in law, not only in memory.
Name Reconstruction as a real, then destroyed, multiracial democracy.
See Jim Crow as statute, court, terror, and labor.
Carry one DHS close: “the past is over” is a claim you still have to check against outcomes.
A short spine — not the whole library 1600s–1860 — Chattel slavery in law Race-based slavery in the colonies; Constitution: three-fifths clause, fugitive slave clause. About four million enslaved by 1860.
1865–1870 — Three amendments 13th abolishes slavery; 14th equal protection; 15th bars racial barriers to voting.
1870s — Reconstruction Black Americans voted and held office. Real multiracial democracy in the South. The part people skip.
1877 — Dismantling Federal troops withdrawn. Disenfranchisement, racial terror, Jim Crow.
1896 — Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court blesses “separate but equal.” Segregation as doctrine, enforced by poll taxes, sharecropping, lynching.
1910s–1970s — Great Migration Millions leave the South and meet new tools of segregation in northern cities — including the housing machine in lesson 5.
The disagreement later is not whether this was unjust. It is how much of it still operates in a present-tense process.
DHS close — your turn When someone says “that was a long time ago,” what outcome in your work would you still look at before you agree?
Keep the answer for lesson 5 (wealth) and the Minnesota child-welfare chart later.
Put this lesson to work What you can change You control whether the history that built starting lines changes a live DHS process connected to The Record or remains information on a page.
What to watch for The team completes the learning, keeps the same default, assigns no owner, and never checks who carries the burden.
Your next step Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Carry this forward Slavery in law, Reconstruction as real democracy, Jim Crow as a system — not a mood.
You control whether the history that built starting lines changes a live DHS process connected to The Record or remains information on a page.
Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Completion is shown by a scenario decision, a knowledge-check response and a saved one-minute commitment.
Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
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Previous lesson Next lesson Carry this into practice What the word means, what the history built, and what the evidence still shows.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
