Georgia
Reconstruction Vignette
| I wish you could look in upon my school of one hundred and thirty scholars. There are bright faces among them bent over puzzling books: a, b, and p are all one now. But these small perplexities will soon be conquered, and the conqueror, perhaps, feel as grand as a promising scholar of mine, who had no sooner mastered his A B C’s, when he conceived that he was persecuted on account of his knowledge. He preferred charges against the children for ill-treatment, concluding with the emphatic assurance that he knew a “little something now”. . . . We learn from the record kept at the Freedmen’s Bureau, that there are two thousand two hundred children here. Some six or seven hundred are yet out of school. The freedmen are interested in the education of their children. You will find a few who have to learn and appreciate what will be its advantage to them and theirs. The old spirit of the system, “I am the master and you are the slave,” is not dead in Georgia. For instance, the people who live next door owned slaves. They are as poor as that renowned church mouse, yet they must have their servant. Employer and employed can never agree: the consequence is a new servant each week. |
Louisa Jacobs (1833-1917)
Source: New York Heritage
In the 1860s, Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and her daughter, Louisa, educated hundreds of formerly enslaved children. They established multiple Freedmen’s Schools, including one in Savannah, Georgia, that Louisa described in this March 1866 letter. She wrote of the Black community’s dedication to formal education and fair labor, as white neighbors clung to the prospect of re-enslavement.
Source: Documenting the American South
Georgia
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Partial
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 2.5 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Georgia’s standards is partial, and their content is subpar. Georgia, though a local-control state, adopted statewide “Standards of Excellence” for social studies education in 2016 and implemented them in 2017.
Grade 4
In the final chronological unit of grade 4, students learn to “analyze the effects of Reconstruction on American life.” The standards focus on the Reconstruction Amendments, Freedmen’s Bureau, and on the rise of Jim Crow, but frame these subjects in passive voice. For instance, the unit emphasizes that Black people “were prevented from exercising their newly won rights” but does not mention how Black people advocated for and fought to preserve those rights nor that their prevention involved violent white supremacist terrorism.
Grade 8
In grade 8, students take a course on “Georgia Studies” that covers the history of Reconstruction in Georgia. These standards cover much the same ground as in grade 4, emphasizing top-down political elements of Reconstruction, particularly the struggle between Pres. Johnson and Congress and the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments. The course standards do mention Black legislators but frame the discussion around their removal from office. There is no requirement to describe how they were elected, who they were, what issues they fought for, who was responsible for removing them or what methods were used to do so.
Most troublingly, standards instruct teachers to have their students “Compare and contrast the goals and outcomes of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Ku Klux Klan.”
Grade 10
Students take U.S. History again in a grade 10 course that covers Reconstruction. The standards focus on getting students to “identify legal, political, and social dimensions of Reconstruction.” As in grades 4 and 8, standards focus on federal politics and do not mention Black people’s grassroots political mobilization. While the standards mention the Freedmen’s Bureau, Black Codes, and the KKK, they do not engage with enduring legacies and repression. The only people mentioned by name are Presidents Lincoln and Johnson.
Educator Experiences
Surveyed teachers explained that teaching Reconstruction can be difficult due to the complex and often graphic material involved and the time constraints on any history course. Mica Brooks, a middle school teacher from Hahira, described the grade 8 standards on Reconstruction as “excellent.” Brooks used a variety of innovative approaches to teach Reconstruction, including sources from a document-based question (DBQ) on the topic and an interactive activity centered on “the horrors of sharecropping.”
One high school teacher explained that they are able typically to devote just three days out of the two-week “Civil War and Reconstruction” unit to Reconstruction. “There’s no time to cover all this” was a common theme in the survey responses as the enormous amount of material that educators must teach in U.S. history courses “does not allow for adequate time to cover Reconstruction.” Some teachers also expressed concern with the content of the state standards. One Savannah high school teacher explained that under the current standards, “the narrative [of Reconstruction] is controlled and told by those that came in power and privilege. This is still the voice and narrative we hear today.”
Sally Stanhope, a high school U.S. history teacher in Atlanta and member of the Stone Mountain Action Coalition, told us, “As a native Atlantan and a product of Georgia’s public schools, I grew up with vocabulary terms like scalawag and carpetbagger (the pejorative terms that Lost Cause historians invented with the endorsement of the United Daughters of the Confederacy). There was no discussion that these were men and women fighting for greater economic and political equality and the achievements they attained for Black and white Georgians. Two decades later, standards still allow teachers to obscure the contingency of the era resulting in a citizenry that understands the perpetuation of white supremacy as the only course possible.”
Assessment
Georgia’s Reconstruction standards touch on many critical Reconstruction topics, but mostly do so glancingly or with troubling framings seemingly derived from the debunked Dunning School of Reconstruction scholarship. Teachers interested in the subject can build on these standards and use outside resources to provide quality instruction, but so long as the standards remain vague, the teaching of Reconstruction will remain dependent on available classroom time and instructor enthusiasm.
Georgia’s standards contain specific descriptions of which topics to cover and emphasize the importance of Reconstruction for understanding state and national history. The specific language of the standards, however, reflects understandings of Reconstruction history that privilege top-down politics, obscure Black organizing and achievements, and downplay white supremacist violence and terrorism. Grade 8 standards, for instance, treat a federal agency (the Freedmen’s Bureau) and a terrorist group (the KKK) as seemingly equally legitimate organizations with competing goals and outcomes — a dangerous framing that could obscure the violence of white supremacist opposition to Reconstruction.
Positively, learning about the Freedmen’s Bureau is a part of the requirements at each grade level. Teachers can use this as a jumping off point to discuss the struggle by freedpeople to control their own labor and the unrealized promise of land redistribution, but more explicit engagement with those topics would be welcome. State standards should be revised to highlight what Black people did to end slavery and build a fragile multiracial democracy in Georgia, and how those advances were undermined and ultimately destroyed.
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 resolution to ban lessons that “promote one race or sex above another” or “indoctrinate” students. It also prohibits students from receiving credit for service learning with advocacy groups. This resolution had not been codified into rules, but its introduction is still troubling.
In the 2022 session, Republican lawmakers introduced HB888, a bill designed to ban the teaching of “concepts in violation of certain federal and state anti-discrimination laws,” and SB377 and HB1084 to ban a broad list of “divisive concepts.” Among these concepts are the history of “slavery, racial discrimination under the law, and racism in general,” claimed by the bill’s authors to be “so inconsistent with the founding principles of the United States.” Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB1084 into law.
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.
moments in Reconstruction history
This short list of events in Georgia’s Reconstruction history is from the Zinn Education Project This Day in History collection. We welcome your suggestions for more.
Dec. 1864 Ebenezer Creek Massacre
People who had escaped from slavery and were following the Union Army, were blocked from crossing the Ebenezer Creek, leading to their death.
Dec. 1867 Georgia Constitutional Convention
The Georgia Constitutional Convention was held with 33 African Americans and 137 whites.
Sept. 1868 Henry McNeal Turner Addressed the Georgia Legislature
Henry McNeal Turner addressed the Georgia Legislature on its decision to expel all Black representatives.
As African Americans marched peacefully in response to their expulsion from elected office, more than a dozen were massacred near Albany, Georgia.
July 1881 Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike
Black women in Atlanta who washed clothes for a living organized an effective Reconstruction era strike -- with clear demands, strategic timing, and door-to-door canvassing.
Jan. 1884 Couple Reunited During Reconstruction
During the Reconstruction Era, people emancipated from slavery searched for their loved ones throughout the United States and Canada. They often used "last seen" ads. This is one case of successful reunification.