Maryland

Educator Experiences

Teachers who responded to our survey were generally content with coverage of Reconstruction in Maryland state standards and district curricula. Some expressed that it could be improved by including more extensive discussions of Reconstruction through “local history and grassroots perspectives.”

The primary concern that teachers expressed was with time and timing. Nearly every survey response mentioned that the placement of Reconstruction toward the end of the grade 8 history course meant that teachers often left it out or gave it insufficient attention. One middle school social studies teacher explained that even though they had attempted to “give it reasonable coverage,” the press of time meant that Reconstruction was “very hurried and tacked on to the end of the unit on the Civil War.” Rachel Nelson, a middle school U.S. history teacher from Baltimore, noted that Reconstruction’s placement at the end of middle school “means most can’t do it justice in that timeframe.”

The timing issue is compounded by the lack of coverage of the topic in high school history. Because high school teachers assume that Reconstruction has been taught in middle school, and it is not an explicit element in their instructional standards and framework, they “rarely discuss Reconstruction specifically.”

Baltimore high school social studies teacher Seth Billingsley selected extracurricular resources to “open my students’ eyes to the myriad possibilities that existed for change during Reconstruction and get beyond the typical, textbook narrative that it had failed due to political compromise, or worse, because of poor governance by ‘carpetbaggers’ and African Americans in the South.”

Tiferet Ani, a social studies content specialist for Montgomery County Public Schools, says students should learn about Reconstruction so that they can “see through the inaccurate narrative of inevitable and ongoing progress and American exceptionalism.” She has her students examine the “history of local Confederate monuments and street names. I ask them to think critically about what belongs in our public spaces, including who and what should be memorialized and celebrated.” She also has her students “research and write historic markers for local Reconstruction sites,” contributing to the Make Reconstruction History Visible mapping project.

Assessment

Maryland’s approach to Reconstruction is relatively robust. In grades 5 and 8 the curricular frameworks balance the political, economic, and social elements of Reconstruction. They are guided by specific references to Black people’s advocacy and white opposition. The framework gives equal weight to the promises and advances of racial and economic justice and the defeats the cause suffered during the period. Including sharecropping as a means to deny Black people freedom is an excellent framing, rare in standards, that captures the economic and physical coercion inherent in the practice. Mentions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the importance of the Black church in community organizing during Reconstruction are also particularly noteworthy and well-incorporated. 

According to Maryland’s grade 8 social studies framework, Reconstruction is the second to last unit of the year. However, the teacher survey responses we received indicate that it has typically become the last unit (thus omitting “The Growth of Industrial America” entirely). No matter how carefully the framework for teaching Reconstruction is constructed, its placement near the end of the year in a transition year inherently limits the amount of time teachers can devote to it.

There are also some areas of content that could be improved. Although the framework includes references to the KKK and “legal and illegal actions” used to deny freedoms to Black people, it does not mention white supremacy as the underlying ideology of opposition to Reconstruction. It also does not explicitly connect Reconstruction to the present day or delve deeply into the positive and negative legacies of the Reconstruction era.

The lack of coverage of Reconstruction in high school is also a concern. The high school U.S. history course’s first unit, “Social, Political, and Economic Reform” in the late 19th century, would be substantially improved by including explicit discussion of Reconstruction and its legacies. The course does include a number of objectives that demonstrate the legacies of the abandonment of Reconstruction, the backlash to gains for racial justice, and how the struggle for Black freedom continued, for example, through the efforts of the NAACP and Garveyism. Making the connection to Reconstruction explicit, encouraging teachers and students to reflect on the legacy of the positive impacts of Reconstruction and the crushing of its promise, would strengthen the state standards.

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 February 2022, Republican lawmakers introduced HB1256 to ban schools from teaching about “discriminatory concepts,” such as racism or sexism. The bill has not passed, but its introduction is still troubling. 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. 

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