Massachusetts
Reconstruction Vignette
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and her daughter, Florida Ruffin Ridley, established The Woman’s Era in 1894. Founded in Boston, Massachusetts, it was the first national newspaper for and by African American women. The Woman’s Era grew out of the Woman’s Era Club, a local civic organization dedicated to community uplift through service, education, and other social provisions. Often excluded from white women’s political projects, Black clubwomen produced and discussed monthly articles on politics, fiction, and social and domestic issues published in The Woman’s Era. Ruffin and Ridley are pictured here in the April 1895 issue. That same year, their local club organized the first National Conference of the Colored Women of America.
Source: Internet Archive
Massachusetts
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Extensive
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 7 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Massachusetts’ standards is extensive, and their content is adequate. The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted the current History and Social Science Curriculum Framework in 2018. The state adopted the first History and Social Science Curriculum Framework in 1997, which was revised in 2003.
The introduction to the current framework contains 10 guiding principles, including one that calls for an inclusive curriculum reflecting diverse historical experiences and perspectives. Some key revisions to the standards in the framework intentionally placed greater emphasis and focus on Reconstruction.
Grade 5
The course spans the colonial era to the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century. Reconstruction is grouped under a section called “Slavery, the Legacy of the Civil War, and the Struggle for Civil Rights for All.” The guiding question asks students to consider how ideas and events in the 19th century led to an expansion of civil rights in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Students examine:
The Reconstruction Amendments.
Black people’s lived experiences after the war, especially the impact of segregation.
Black people’s political mobilizations, particularly institution building.
The organized perpetuation of white supremacist beliefs and the threat of violence from extralegal groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
High School
The high school U.S. History I course spans from 1700 to 1920. Prior to the 2018 revision, the course went from the Revolution to Reconstruction.
Students are required to “Analyze the consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction,” including:
The role of the federal government — the impeachment of Pres. Johnson; Reconstruction Amendments; the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Black political mobilizations and institution building.
The end of Reconstruction — the presidential election of 1876 and assessing the successes and failures of the period.
The long-term legacies of Reconstruction — founding of Black colleges and universities; rise of Jim Crow; white supremacist beliefs and violence.
Educator Experiences
In response to our survey, Massachusetts teachers generally reported that the current state standards on Reconstruction are adequate and a great improvement on previous standards. One Boston high school teacher explained that the 2018 framework “lacks specificity in some areas, particularly regarding sharecropping,” but “does give teachers the leeway to teach a host of issues related to Reconstruction.” Time, however, remains a limiting factor. One middle school teacher explained that they felt “almost forced to race through the curriculum” and worried that Reconstruction would not receive sufficient classroom time.
Several teachers described their innovative approaches to teaching Reconstruction in middle and high school. Many had made use of Zinn Education Project resources and other outside sources to deepen their students’ understanding of the era. One teacher explained that they consciously sought to center Black people’s experiences during Reconstruction as a counter to their own experience learning only about the national politics of the era during school.
Middle school social studies teacher Lois Hammond wrote to us about her own education and her efforts to improve that of her students: “My experience learning about the Reconstruction era in school (which I’m sure was like most people’s) centered around the Reconstruction Amendments and the actions of the President and Congress. As a teacher, I wanted to go beyond the amendments to introduce my students to the individuals who were involved in the abolition movement and the fight for equality and justice.
The Zinn Education Project’s Reconstruction Mixer lesson did just that. Students took on roles of people involved not just in the abolitionist movement but also in the women’s rights and union workers’ movement. It’s a good day when students know the names and stories of people who fought for justice in their community and their nation. The diversity of the people included in the activity led to some interesting conversations. In our post-mixer discussion, students spoke up about the tensions between different movements, especially the abolitionist and women’s rights movements.
My class delved into a deeper conversation about what to do when you don’t get what you are fighting for — do you support the other movements or do you stand firm and focus on only what you want? This is a discussion we would not have had if we had just looked at the Reconstruction Amendments and the actions of the people at the top!”
Assessment
The Massachusetts framework attempts to tell a comprehensive and nuanced history of Reconstruction, and it provides relatively robust coverage of critical topics. The revision of the high school course so that the year does not end with Reconstruction is particularly welcome and could provide a helpful model for other states looking to improve their teaching of the era and its legacies.
Two positive aspects of the standards stand out: Reconstruction, specifically the Reconstruction Amendments, are tied to the longer 20th-century struggle for civil rights; and the standards directly connect the KKK and rise of Jim Crow to white supremacy. The standards could still do more to highlight Black people’s lived experiences, especially their struggles for land and labor autonomy.
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.