Idaho
Reconstruction Vignette
| African Americans arriving in Idaho with hopes of escaping white racism must have been in large measure disappointed. It is true that Idaho’s white legislators in the territory’s early days decided that the number of African Americans was so small that no specific “Jim Crow” laws would be needed. However, African Americans were lumped in with other “persons of color” in the restrictive statutes such as curfew laws that were enacted all over the state, principally aimed at the more numerous Chinese populations. |
In late 19th-century Idaho, white legislators targeted a growing population of Chinese immigrants with discriminatory laws to drive them out of the territory. Such measures served as a white supremacist catch-all, restricting the freedoms of people of color across Idaho.
Source: “Idaho Ebony: The African American Presence in Idaho State History” by Mamie O. Oliver
Idaho
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Nonexistent
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 0 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Idaho’s standards is effectively nonexistent. The Idaho State Department of Education adopted the current social studies standards in 2016. Idaho is a local-control state. Students are supposed to learn about Reconstruction in a U.S. History I course that can be taught at any point between grades 6-12.
The standards are broad and minimal, as expected from a local-control state. The U.S. History I course covers the colonial era to Reconstruction. The only standard that mentions Reconstruction requires students to:
Discuss the causes and effects of various compromises and conflicts in American history, such as the American Revolution, Civil War and Reconstruction.
The standards also require students to “Describe the experiences of culturally, ethnically, and racially different groups existing as part of American society prior to the Civil War.” However, as that standard explicitly focuses on U.S. society before the Civil War, it excludes Reconstruction.
Because Idaho’s standards provide so little information about whether and how districts and schools should teach Reconstruction, we chose to investigate curricula at the district level. The Local Snapshot below is not meant as a judgment of these districts’ approach to Reconstruction. They were chosen largely at random and are not factored into the grade the state standards receive. The brief analysis of district-level curricula that follows is intended to simply provide a snapshot into how state standards, or lack thereof, can shape Reconstruction pedagogy in the classroom.
Local Snapshot
Reconstruction is covered in the grade 9 U.S. history course in the Boise School District. The “Civil War and Reconstruction” unit is the second to last unit of the course and receives four weeks of instruction time.
Reconstruction-related “Learning Objectives” include:
Explain how Southern states restricted the political, social and economic freedoms of African Americans.
Contrast the Reconstruction policies of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and Congress and evaluate their successes and failures.
Explain the provision of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments and the political forces supporting and opposing each.
The course curriculum also includes a set of “Essential Questions” for students to discuss:
Should the South have been treated as a defeated nation or as rebellious states?
Does racial equality depend upon government action?
Was Reconstruction a success or failure?
“Factual Content” covered in the unit includes the Reconstruction Amendments, the
Freedmen’s Bureau, Black Codes, Carpetbagger, Sharecropping, KKK, Segregation, and Jim Crow Laws.
The high school U.S. history course begins in 1900. Although it recaps the Gilded Age in the first unit, the curriculum does not mention Reconstruction.
Pocatello/Chubbuck School District #25
Reconstruction is its own unit in the grade 9 U.S. history course in the Pocatello/Chubbuck district with a recommended pacing of one to two weeks. The curriculum content focuses on the details of the various Reconstruction plans and largely on the negative legacies of Reconstruction for Black people. Students are expected to:
Understand the successes and failures of Reconstruction on incorporating African Americans into American society.
Understand that the failures of the Reconstruction effort ultimately led to the continuous discrimination African Americans experienced in the Jim Crow South.
Understand the lasting legacy of Reconstruction on the United States.
The unit’s list of “Key Academic Vocabulary” is extremely detailed. Notable mentions include: the Freedmen’s Bureau, Black Codes, the Reconstruction Amendments and several congressional Reconstruction acts, Scalawags, carpetbaggers, Thaddeus Stevens, sharecropping, Ku Klux Klan, Redeemers, Compromise of 1877, Jim Crow laws, poll tax, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, Plessy v. Ferguson, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Ida B. Wells.
Educator Experiences
Only one educator in Idaho responded to our survey, and he is a retired history teacher. He wrote that Idaho is “a self-proclaimed enemy of ‘critical race theory’” and that the official curriculum “completely ignores” the Reconstruction era. He added that students should be learning about the era as “an experiment of political and social inclusiveness” and “how the undoing of Reconstruction is manifest in white supremacy.”
Assessment
Idaho’s Reconstruction standards are effectively nonexistent. The standards mention the topic only once. However, some districts cover it extensively in their high school U.S. history courses. The curricula of both Boise and Pocatello/Chubbuck offer detailed coverage of the political history of Reconstruction and the method and legacy of its defeat.
They do, however, generally lack coverage of Black people’s political mobilization and efforts to secure their own land and labor. The curriculum in Boise largely tells a story of Reconstruction as a political initiative ultimately derailed by Jim Crow laws and segregation. It does not discuss Black people’s agency or efforts to gain economic and political equality and independence. The inclusion of specific Black people in the Pocatello/Chubbuck vocabulary list is particularly welcome, as is the extensive coverage of the measures white Southerners used to defeat Reconstruction. However, there is almost no mention of the positive legacies of Reconstruction, or of Black people’s political and economic organizing efforts and tentative successes during Reconstruction. It is possible that the state standards’ framing of Reconstruction in terms of “conflict and compromise” shapes Pocatello/Chubbuck’s approach to the subject.
Without guidance around key Reconstruction-era history, many students will not learn about the intensification of white supremacy, the Black Codes, the KKK, debates over who would control land and labor, and Black agency and political organizing. 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 April 2021, Gov. Brad Little signed into law HB377, a bill that bans the teaching of tenets “often found in ‘critical race theory,’” framed as those “contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens.” These tenets include any discussion of systemic racism and sexism. In January 2022, the local government committee introduced HB488, a bill that would allow any taxpayer in the state to file a civil complaint against a district teaching banned concepts. Several respondents to our survey expressed concern about the possible chilling effects on classroom education that such bills can have around the country, particularly on discussions of the history and legacies of Reconstruction.