Utah
Reconstruction Vignette
Click image to make larger.
On Aug. 1, 1882, a Black musical ensemble called the Jubilee Singers performed at an opera house in Ogden, Utah. The group formed at Fisk University, a historically Black college in Tennessee, and first toured in 1871 as a school fundraising effort. They quickly gained popularity and introduced people around the country to African American musical traditions, like spirituals, disrupting white perceptions of Black musicians promoted at racist minstrel shows. This Ogden Herald clipping described their 1882 tour stop as a riveting concert for Utahns.
Source: Utah Digital Newspapers
Utah
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Partial
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 1 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Utah’s standards is partial, and their content is dreadful. The Utah State Board of Education adopted the current Utah Standards for Social Studies in 2016. The Standards for Social Studies are undergoing revision.
Grade 5
The U.S. history course covers the colonial era to the 20th century. Reconstruction is not mentioned.
Students examine the Civil War and the “immediate and long-term” impact of the war including the “difficulties of reconciliation within the nation” but this is not directly tied to a broader era of Reconstruction. Students also examine the “impact of major economic forces at work in the post-Civil War” focusing on the “free-market system” and the “roles of new immigrants played in the economy” but the transition to free labor during Reconstruction is not mentioned. The course then jumps to World War I.
Grades 7–12
The standards for grades 7–12 are not organized by grade level but by “strands,” which represent content areas like time periods or core principles students should learn.
U.S. History I has seven strands that span from the prehistoric era to the Civil War and Reconstruction. The section on the Civil War and Reconstruction includes guiding questions about Reconstruction including:
What forces made Reconstruction so difficult?
What is the proper way to memorialize controversial events and people?
The two standards focused on Reconstruction say students should:
Compare historians’ interpretations of other competing goals of Reconstruction and why many of those goals were left unrealized
Students will use current events to evaluate the implications of the Civil War and Reconstruction for contemporary American life
The U.S. History II course starts in 1890 and does not cover Reconstruction.
Educator Experiences
Utah teachers who responded to our survey expressed particular concern with the timing of Reconstruction coverage and the amount of classroom attention it receives. Genevieve Draper, a high school teacher in Cedar City, explained that U.S. history is split into units in grade 8 and grade 11. Reconstruction is “swallowed up in a Civil War standard,” in middle school. This means that “Reconstruction usually isn’t addressed in 8th grade in the end of the year rush (and the sense that the Civil War itself is the more compelling and important end note).” Because the grade 11 course begins chronologically in 1877, Reconstruction is often left out entirely from the high school curriculum. Draper reported that “many teachers do a recap of earlier U.S. History in 11th grade,” giving them the opportunity to “enlarge upon this narrative.”
Lindsay Adams, a middle school educator, chose to prioritize Reconstruction and go beyond the required standards. In a three- to four-week unit, Adams’s students learn about “the rise of Black Churches — and then tie that rise to both the Great Migration and the Civil Rights Movement. It’s a unit that keeps on giving and helps students understand community organizing and mutual aid.”
Assessment
The Utah standards on Reconstruction are inadequate. The standards focus on a narrative of “reconciliation” rather than engaging with both the radical struggle for progress during Reconstruction. A narrative that prioritizes “reconciliation” is grounded in white supremacy. It focuses on the reunionification of white Northerners and Southerners, glorifying their “shared sacrifice” of the Civil War and minimizing its causes and outcomes — slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, primarily. This lens ignores the systemic terror and disenfranchisement of Black people and rejects the reckoning required to foster racial justice and create a more equitable society. Although the standards provide openings to discuss the violent white backlash to Black people’s gains during the era, they do not foreground white supremacy as an overwhelming force across institutions and regions. Nor do they discuss Black people’s lived experiences, especially their struggles for land and labor autonomy and political equality.
Teaching Reconstruction effectively requires centering Black people’s struggles to redefine freedom and equality and gain control of their own land and labor during and after the Civil War. Any discussion of Reconstruction must also grapple with the role of white supremacist terrorism in the defeat of Reconstruction and the negative and positive legacies of the era that persist to this day.
In June 2021, the state board of education approved a rule designed to restrict teaching about systemic racism and sexism. In 2023, proposed bill HB427 would ban any teaching that “forces the student to confront a sincerely held belief, value, or standard that is taught in the student's home.” Several respondents to our survey expressed concern about the possible chilling effects on classroom education that such measures can have around the country, particularly on discussions of the history and legacies of Reconstruction.