[ A report from the Zinn Education Project released early last
year found that, nationwide, the Reconstruction era is seldom taught
accurately in K-12 schools, and often not enough class time is spent
discussing this period. As a result, the Reconstruction era is poorly
understood.]
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THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA IS NOT TAUGHT WELL IN US SCHOOLS — HERE’S
WHY THAT MATTERS  
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Catherine Caruso
February 1, 2023
Teen Vogue
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_ A report from the Zinn Education Project released early last year
found that, nationwide, the Reconstruction era is seldom taught
accurately in K-12 schools, and often not enough class time is spent
discussing this period. As a result, the Reconstruction era is poorly
understood. _

A group portrait of the first African-American legislators in the
41st and 42nd Congress, Library of Congress

 

The post-Civil War Reconstruction era marked a period of massive
social, political, economic, and cultural advancements for Black
Americans. Between 1865 and 1877, formerly enslaved people gained
citizenship rights, fought for land ownership and economic
independence, ran for elected office, and established many civic,
religious, and educational institutions that are still with us
[[link removed]] today
[[link removed]].
With these gains, however, also came fierce backlash to racial
progress. White supremacists used violence and intimidation to reverse
many of these advancements and ushered in a new era of Jim Crow laws.

Despite the fact that Reconstruction is an important, influential
chapter in American history — and that we are still dealing with the
fallout of its end — many public and private school curricula do not
give adequate attention to this era, spending more time on other
periods in American history, such as the Civil War and the Civil
Rights Movement. A report
[[link removed]] from the Zinn
Education Project released early last year found that, nationwide, the
Reconstruction era is seldom taught accurately in K-12 schools, and
often not enough class time is spent discussing this period. As a
result, the Reconstruction era is poorly understood.

According to the Zinn report
[[link removed]], state standards
and history curricula nationwide fail to “teach a sufficiently
complex and comprehensive history of Reconstruction.” Instead,
students are often taught an inaccurate and racist depiction of the
time. Jesse Hagopian, an educator and organizer with the Zinn
Education Project, tells _Teen Vogue,_ “Our report on
Reconstruction discovered that the vast majority of states established
education standards that ignore the role of white supremacy in ending
Reconstruction, and they reproduce racist and false framings of
Reconstruction that obscure the contributions of Black people to
Reconstruction's achievements.” 

Much of this is due to the fact that many history textbooks are either
inadequate, outdated, or rely on misinformation and racist propaganda
once peddled
[[link removed]] by the Dunning
School, a group of Columbia University scholars led by historian
William A. Dunning in the early 20th century. Most scholars and
historians now recognize Reconstruction as a period of Black activism
and prosperity, but the Dunning scholars created
[[link removed]] a school of
thought that portrayed
[[link removed]] the
Reconstruction era as a massive failure. According to this racist,
revisionist history, Black Americans were “ignorant” and easily
manipulated by northern Republicans, who took advantage of corrupt
state governments to punish former Confederates and slave owners, who
were predominately white southern Democrats.

“The Dunning School peddled in this ‘lost cause’ narrative that
made the South seem like a noble cause, as if they were fighting for
tradition rather than fighting to maintain human bondage,” Hagopian
says. “And that, unfortunately, is a narrative that weaved itself
into corporate textbooks all over the country throughout US
history.” This false narrative was also upheld
[[link removed]] by
the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group focused on ensuring
that history textbooks and other reading materials painted the
Confederacy — and the forces of white supremacy during
Reconstruction — in a respectable and positive light.

In addition, the report found
[[link removed]] that most state
standards do not center the efforts and accomplishments of Black
Americans during this time, provide clear and consistent definitions
of the era, or emphasize the role the Ku Klux Klan had in actively
dismantling racial progress and ending Reconstruction. For instance,
Massachusetts is the only state in the US that requires
[[link removed]] teachers to
directly link white supremacy to the birth of the KKK. Meanwhile,
Georgia’s Standards of Excellence instructs middle school students
to compare the Freedmen’s Bureau
[[link removed]], a
government agency established to provide food, housing, education,
legal assistance, and other necessities to formerly enslaved people,
with the KKK and other white supremacists. According to Hagopian,
asking students to compare these two entities “creates a dangerous,
false moral equivalency.”

“The Ku Klux Klan was a terrorist organization that killed thousands
of people, tortured thousands of Black people, burned their schools
down, committed unspeakable acts of sexual assault and rape," Hagopian
continues. "Comparing that to the Freedmen's Bureau, which helped
establish the public school system in the South, is absurd and
wrong.” 

In other states, including Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, students
are asked [[link removed]] to
discuss the impact that “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags” had on
Reconstruction. Both words are derogatory terms that were once used by
white southern Democrats to describe northerners who moved south and
white southerners who supported Republicans and Black Americans.

Collectively, these inadequate standards, inaccurate textbooks, and
incomplete curricula contribute to a greater misunderstanding of one
of the most transformative periods in American history. In reality,
the Reconstruction era was a new beginning for America. According to
Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University, who is also
considered the nation’s foremost historian on the era,
Reconstruction was the first time in American history that the country
made an effort to become a democracy for _all_ men. During this
time, the US Constitution was amended
[[link removed]] to
include the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which had an immense
impact on Black people’s political power in America: The 13th
Amendment abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment established birthright
citizenship and guaranteed equal protection under the law; and the
15th Amendment granted Black men the right to vote
[[link removed]].

In addition, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the
Reconstruction Acts, which helped set the foundation for this new form
of multiracial democracy. Many Black Americans ran for office and won
[[link removed]],
with 16 Black men elected to Congress, 600 serving in state
legislatures, and hundreds more elected to various local offices.
“It was the first time that African Americans, in any significant
numbers, were able to vote, were able to hold office,” Foner
tells _Teen Vogue_. “So this was a remarkable change in the whole
nature of American society coming out of slavery.” Black Americans
also built their own independent institutions, establishing
[[link removed]] schools, churches,
and grassroots organizations that helped mobilize Black political
power.

Some Black Americans even became landowners during Reconstruction,
although this was not a result of the “40 acres and a mule” myth.
According to Foner, one of the most common misconceptions of the
Reconstruction era is that formerly enslaved people were
actually given
[[link removed]] 40
acres of land and a mule as reparations, of a sort, for their
enslavement. But this never happened. Union general William T. Sherman
did issue an order in 1865 to set aside 400,000 acres of land in South
Carolina and Georgia for the settlement of Black families, with 40
acres for each family, and later to loan them Army mules for
transportation; but this move was reversed by President Andrew
Johnson, who was opposed to Reconstruction and ordered the land to be
returned to its former Confederate owners, Foner explains.

Despite many gains and advancements during Reconstruction, the era was
marred by rampant political and white supremacist violence. “One of
the defining aspects of Reconstruction politics is the sheer amount of
violence going on during elections," _New York Times_ opinion
columnist Jamelle Bouie tells _Teen Vogue._ "And a good deal of that
violence is the result of these white vigilante groups.” 

According to Bouie, the KKK, the White League, and other white
supremacist terrorist groups “emerged in response to the beginnings
of Black political organizations to, obviously, kind of undermine them
and reestablish some version of social relations that existed under
slavery.” What started as a proliferation of racist, mocking imagery
— which Bouie refers to as “elements of pageantry and
even minstrelsy [[link removed]]”
— quickly escalated to organized violence “against the formerly
enslaved and their white allies. In several instances," Bouie adds,
"including Louisiana in 1874
[[link removed]] and Mississippi
[[link removed]] in [1875],
White League violence essentially helped defeat a couple of candidates
for office.”

Not long after this, the Reconstruction era officially came to an end.
Marred by allegations of voter suppression and ballot tampering, the
presidential election of 1876 was deeply disputed. Southern Democrats
were eager to regain power, but they eventually agreed
[[link removed]] to
concede and accept Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes as the
winner in exchange for certain demands. Known as the Compromise of
1877
[[link removed]],
the informal deal’s official terms remain unknown, but the result
was: Federal troops left former Confederate states and Black Americans
were stripped of their protections for exercising their political
rights in the South, despite Hayes promising in his acceptance speech
[[link removed]] that his
administration would “cherish” the “truest interests… of the
white, and of the colored people both, and equally.” The compromise
ushered in an era of Jim Crow laws
[[link removed]],
which sought to uphold white supremacy and reestablish white rule by
segregating public accommodations, criminalizing interracial
relationships
[[link removed]],
and disenfranchising Black Americans
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poll taxes, literacy tests, and other forms of voter suppression.

Experts agree that studying this history, however, can help students
better understand
[[link removed]] America’s
past and the structural racism that still plagues our nation today,
which is especially important given the present political climate.
“One of the reasons Reconstruction is so relevant to the current
moment or the most recent past is the rise of a racist backlash
against progress,” Foner points out. “Reconstruction tells us
about the ideals that Americans claim to follow, the ideals of
equality and democracy for all; but it also tells us about a
tradition, unfortunately, of racism, of violence, and of many people
feeling that too many people are voting, that the results of elections
are not to be taken seriously.” From the January 6 insurrection to
waves of voter suppression laws targeting people of color
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these themes are still very much with us.

According to Bouie, the “core ideological struggle” of the
Reconstruction era raised many important questions about who America
is for and who should be considered an American. For the first time,
Americans were asking themselves what kind of government they wanted:
a multiracial democracy or a white man’s democracy? “Part of what
you see during Reconstruction is Americans grappling with questions
about the legacies of slavery, about the role of the state, about the
nature of citizenship itself, who it includes and who it excludes, if
anyone,” he says. The circumstances have certainly changed, but,
Bouie asserts, these are arguments we’re still having.

The Zinn Education Project wants state standards to be updated and
teachers to be given the proper tools and resources to teach students
a more honest, accurate depiction of the Reconstruction era. In many
states, though, lawmakers are forcing schools to take the opposite
tack
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restricting classroom discussion of race and other aspects of US
history. But Hagopian hopes that resources like the Zinn project can
help answer some of the era’s most central questions.

If there’s one lesson to be learned from Reconstruction, it’s that
“the price of freedom is eternal vigilance,” Foner says. “Rights
can be gained and rights can be lost. Many people didn't quite realize
that until we are now seeing it. We are seeing principles that seem to
have been achieved forever turned back, wiped away — and that
happened during and after Reconstruction.” He continues, “So,
studying Reconstruction is very important, both in terms of what was
attempted and the bitter resistance that the policies of
Reconstruction generated.”

_Catherine Caruso is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in
the Philly Inquirer, Medium and Liberal Currents._

* Reconstruction
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* education policy
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* Zinn Education Project
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