Minnesota
Reconstruction Vignette
| Black adults may have represented threats to low-skilled or unskilled white laborers, but it was Black children who seemed to pose the worst threat by personifying the future of Blacks in St. Paul. Accordingly, in August 1865 the school board “almost unanimously” passed a resolution challenging the racial mingling which had been "to some extent permitted" in the schools and again instructed the superintendent to provide “a suitable teacher and accomodations” for Black children. It further resolved that “no children of African descent be thereafter admitted to any other public school.” In October official notice was given that a “School for Colored Children” would open in Morrison's Building at Ninth and Jackson Streets (although furniture was not yet available). . . . Soon after classes began, however, the board of education discovered “problems of maintaining and operating” the school. (No such problems apparently existed in the city's three established schools — Washington, Adams, and Jefferson — and one new German-English school, where a total of 1,241 students were enrolled). |
In the early months of Reconstruction, the school board in St. Paul, Minnesota, designated a separate and unequal school for Black children. With minimal funding and supplies, this school was dilapidated — unable to even provide sufficient shelter to students from the city’s harsh winter weather. Attendance dwindled over the next few years. In 1869, however, state legislators responded to years of petitions and other advocacy efforts from Black Minnesotans and legally ended school segregation.
Source: “Race and Segregation in St. Paul’s Public Schools, 1846-69,” by William D. Green
Minnesota
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Partial
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 2.5 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Minnesota’s current standards is partial, and their content is subpar. The Minnesota Department of Education adopted the current social studies standards in 2011. The standards are currently under review and the department has released an early draft of the new standards. According to the current standards, Reconstruction is taught in grades 6, 7, and 9–12.
Reconstruction is covered at all grade levels under one learning standard, which says that students should understand: “Regional tensions around economic development, slavery, territorial expansion and governance resulted in a civil war and a period of Reconstruction that led to the abolition of slavery, a more powerful federal government, a renewed push into indigenous nations’ territory and continuing conflict over racial relations. (Civil War and Reconstruction: 1850–1877).”
Grade 6
In grade 6, the standards focus on the Civil War. The section that covers Reconstruction emphasizes the growth of industry in the United States.
Grade 7
In grade 7, students examine the “effects of the Civil War on Americans in the North, South and West, including liberated African Americans, women, former slaveholders, and indigenous peoples.” Examples of relevant topics include the Reconstruction Amendments, Black Codes, sharecropping, women’s suffrage, and homesteading.
High School
In the high school U.S. history course, students are asked to:
Describe significant individuals, groups and institutions involved in the struggle for rights for African Americans.
Analyze the stages and processes by which enslaved African Americans were freed and emancipation was achieved during the war.
Outline the federal policies of wartime and postwar United States; explain the impact of these policies on Southern politics, society, the economy, race relations, and gender roles.
Describe the content, context, and consequences of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments; evaluate the successes and failures of the Reconstruction, including the election of 1876, in relation to freedom and equality across the nation.
Proposed New Standards
The state Department of Education is currently in the midst of a full revision of the social studies standards. The early draft that the department released in 2021 does not yet contain learning benchmarks and will likely change during the ongoing public comment process. The new proposed standard offers a substantial revision of Reconstruction coverage, notably separating the topic from the Civil War. Students will be asked to: “Describe the content, context, and consequences of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and evaluate the successes and failures of the Reconstruction, including successful efforts to disenfranchise newly freed Black Americans, making sure to connect this history to persistent discrimination and inequity in the present.”
Educator Experiences
Minnesota teachers who responded to our survey emphasized that they thought the state standards on Reconstruction did not present a substantial barrier to teaching the topic. The biggest challenge they reported was time. To devote sufficient attention to teaching a comprehensive history of Reconstruction many teachers found they had to take time away from other topics. As Mark Kraker, a teacher from Vadnais Heights, explained, “Reconstruction is one of those time periods where I feel I could easily spend an entire year delving into it.”
Some teachers have found ways to include the Zinn Education Project’s Reconstructing the South lesson into their curricula. Charlie Carr, a high school social studies teacher in Plymouth, explained that in response to the role play, students “began to think about just how challenging this time period was and I think gained a better understanding of why this era needs to be studied closer and revisited throughout our year of U.S. history together.”
Joshua Watne, a middle school teacher in Thief River Falls, led his U.S. history class in the ZEP’s Make Reconstruction Visible mapping project. Watne’s students researched Reconstruction era people and places connected to Minnesota and added them to the interactive map. They unearthed stories that had long been under-studied, learning not only the history of Reconstruction but also just how much of that history is left out of standard lessons and textbooks.
Assessment
Minnesota’s current Reconstruction standards are vague and insufficient. They lack specifics (for example, no mention of the Freedmen’s Bureau), focus on national politics, and do not center Black agency and activism as the driving force of Reconstruction. There is also no mention of white supremacist terrorism or disenfranchisement. More positively, the grade 7 standards emphasize learning about the effects of the Civil War on varied groups, while the high school standards focus on the “successes and failures of Reconstruction” and how they shaped “freedom and equality across the nation.”
The proposed new standards promise a considerable improvement, setting Reconstruction apart from the Civil War, discussing disenfranchisement, and “making sure to connect this history to persistent discrimination and inequity in the present.” These standards could be further improved by adding coverage of Black people’s efforts to define and gain freedom and equality and control their own land and labor.
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 2022, Republican lawmakers introduced HF2778, a bill that would ban schools from teaching “critical race theory” or providing teachers with related professional development. They also introduced HF3301 to prohibit required instruction related to “critical race theory” — defined in this bill as “the social construction of race and institutionalized racism, and how race intersects with identity, systems, and policies.” Both bills died in committee. In 2023, Republicans failed to pass a similar bill. Still, the introduction of these bills is 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.