Responses
Here we offer selected responses to the report. Share your reflections and related stories on Twitter with the hashtag #TeachReconstruction, use the form at the end of this page, or email us at zep@zinnedproject.org.
At the end of the school year, I sent my proposal to the National Board of Education. Though the response I received was generic, the Zinn Education Project’s Reconstruction report and articles have provoked me, as a junior in high school, to continue to advocate for fixing the discrepancies in the historical record left behind many years ago. — Danny Huang, high school student, Ridgewood, New Jersey
In 10th grade, I wrote to the National Board of Education advocating for a nationwide curriculum for Reconstruction to combat the miseducation or complete omission of that era being taught in the United States.
Much of what I wrote can be credited to the Zinn Education Project’s research, which made evident to me that Reconstruction was widely misconstrued. What started as just a class research project on Reconstruction blossomed into a cause that fostered genuine devotion.
When the Teach Reconstruction report emerged, I was blown away. Together, the students and I radically altered the syllabus and we spent about three weeks on this period, watching parts of documentaries, reading some Eric Foner, some primary sources, and parts of the report.
Finally, I gave students an assignment that involved lobbying our department about the importance of teaching a specific topic: either Reconstruction, or one of the other crisis-level issues we’d been studying — gerrymandering, Citizens United, voter suppression, and a few other similar issues. Most chose Reconstruction.
Students were invited to either write a letter to everyone in the department with an accompanying draft lesson plan, or create a “persuasive poster” with additional information online via a QR code. Below are some of the posters. — Jane Regan, high school U.S. history teacher, Duxbury, Vermont
The section of the Reconstruction report on Delaware was really accurate and well informed. It included valid criticism of the state's social studies standards and it addressed the degree to which local control governs what's taught. Great read!
Thanks to the report writers for all of their work. It is a benefit for teachers to have studies like this with different approaches to teaching an era of history, access to real historiography, and that address the historical controversy. It invites us to be collaborative with our students about how we know what we know and what we base our decisions on. The work is getting used and I appreciate it. — Brendon Butler, high school U.S. history teacher, Camden, Delaware
I shared the report on Reconstruction with my students. They were troubled that our state (New York) curriculum only earned a 6.5 and we talked about how to dig deeper. Then we randomly looked at other rankings. They were shocked that there were 1s and 2s.
One wondered how students from those states could understand the long, deep past of racism if they never learned about Reconstruction. We have a student that is starting this week from a state that had a really low score. They can't wait to ask her what she has learned. Facts and conversation change lives. — Heather Tillman, high school social studies teacher, Penn Yan, New York
After engaging in several lessons on Reconstruction and reviewing the Reconstruction report, Philadelphia high school teacher Adam Sanchez asked his students what they had learned and whether they thought it was important for students to learn about this history and why. Here are a few of their responses.
I: “I didn’t learn much about Reconstruction before. I didn’t know how much power Black people had gained in this short period of time and had always just assumed it went immediately from slavery to Jim Crow. It is important for students to learn about this era because it represents a period of mass change that reveals that Black people don’t need saving, but have seized and defined freedom on their own.”
T: “I didn’t know that African Americans made significant progress during Reconstruction. . . It helps us understand why America is currently in the state it is in and the causes of the backlash, both to Reconstruction and Black progress today. But learning about Reconstruction also teaches us that if people come together, they can bring forth major political reforms, even changes to the Constitution.”
M: “I didn’t know that Black people were actually very powerful in the pre-Jim Crow period after the Civil War. This is probably a facet of U.S. history that’s frequently glossed over, and for a reason: People want to make it seem like Black people just went from struggle to struggle, when in fact, we were perfectly OK until the big political parties backstabbed us.”
S: “I learned there was an era of Black power that I didn’t even know existed, the school curriculum usually skips from Civil War to Jim Crow but there are so many things that happened in between. It’s a shame schools skip over it typically.”
W: “It is important to learn about Reconstruction because it can teach us about what the country could have been like if Jim Crow laws hadn’t come to pass.”
J: “I was not aware of the fact that during Reconstruction, African Americans actually were able to obtain significant power, serving as mayors, police officers, governors, judges, etc.
We know that the best history education is empowering, relevant, and accurate. By calling on states to emphasize Black agency in demanding freedom and mobilizing to achieve it, making connections to students’ lives and the present, and teaching how white supremacist ideology, policy, and action crushed the promise of Reconstruction, the Zinn Education Project's Reconstruction report provides a blueprint for states, districts, and teachers to improve their instruction on this pivotal and ever relevant period. — Tiferet Ani, social studies content specialist, Montgomery County, Maryland
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.
I agree with the analysis in the Zinn Education Project report on Reconstruction. Georgia standards that address Reconstruction fail to show white Georgians’ active role in reinventing the racial caste system and obscure the accomplishments that Black men and women achieved despite the terrorism and poverty they faced daily.
Take William Finch, a forgotten hero, who as the first Black member of Atlanta’s City Council created the city’s public school system. He, as well as Susie King Taylor, should be mentioned by name in the 8th-grade Georgia Studies curriculum. Indeed, the 8th-grade standards should encourage students and teachers to delve into local histories of Reconstruction, yet they do just the opposite.
If I were to rewrite the standards, I would ensure that, starting in the 4th-grade, students examined the influence of the Lost Cause on how Americans remember and talk about the Civil War. I also would emphasize that it was Black leaders who achieved the redistribution of plantation lands and white men and women (who had fought against the United States) demanded the return of those lands and then invented convict leasing to replace slavery.
In a state that continues to have the most number of schools named after Confederate leaders, it is essential that teachers and students celebrate the potential of Reconstruction and understand how its results continue to shape our communities. — Sally Stanhope, high school U.S. history teacher, Atlanta, Georgia, and member of the Stone Mountain Action Coalition
All students, but especially Black and Brown students, need to know this history in order to understand the power their ancestors had to persevere in the face of unthinkable violence and racism.
As teachers review the information in the report and actively add the history of Reconstruction to their curriculum, we can give our students a fuller accounting of U.S. History. — Nelva Williamson, middle and high school social studies teacher, Houston, Texas
This report is a necessary national overview into the lack of teaching Reconstruction in public K-12 schools.
Too many state's textbooks frame this era as a "failure" which diminishes the importance and power of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and the rise of political power of newly freed enslaved people.
As an ELA teacher, it can be trickier to tie content directly to standards and even more so because we teach the same lessons each day at grade level. I was able to discuss portions of Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction when introducing students to the idea of standards-based grading and teaching. We have been incorporating more rubrics and standards and it led to some discussions about why standards are important and how they can impact education. I explained to students how some teachers have been able to avoid or misrepresent certain topics from Reconstruction because the standards are specific enough, such as how many standards “emphasize a top-down history of Reconstruction focused on government, politics, and policy with little emphasis on ordinary Black people and their organizing strategies.”
Basically this removes the humanity from the issue and allows it to be glossed over. We also mention that standards “limit the significance of Reconstruction to Southern states” and “do not address the enduring legacies of Reconstruction or make connections to the present day.” Being in Washington state this often gives students, staff, and communities a free pass of thinking the issue was far away. It is easy to bring it home by reminding them we were once part of Oregon Territory when it was the only place to outlaw Black people altogether and had laws demanding public lashes every six months.
As we continued to discuss the evolution of standards and how it has impacted what we teach and how, we tied it to our discussion for Hispanic Heritage Month and our discussion around why there is a need for honorific months and lessons in the first place. This was also right after our Hispanic Heritage Month Mixer, and it led to some good discussions about disenfranchisement and the need to highlight achievement along with struggles.
I grew up in the school district I teach in and our talk finished by connecting the report to the changes in curriculum and standards since I attended school. Although there has been progress, two out of three classes I discussed the issues with agreed there needs to be more. If open to interpretation, it allows too many chances for marginalized communities to be kept in the margins and forgotten. It allows students to go through school without ever seeing themselves or their history represented with success and resilience instead of as a lesson in failure. — Colten Fox, high school social studies teacher, Washougal, Washington
I've long argued that #Reconstruction needs to be taught as perhaps *the* seminal moment in American history, taught with purpose & a fierce sense of urgency. This period holds the key to grasping so much of who were are as a nation today. @ZinnEdProject https://t.co/ld5hHl7n8B
— Professor Swogger (@ProfSwogger) January 15, 2022
When I visited The World's Last Bookstore (a very good bookstore) in Los Angeles, I went to their U.S. History section. There was a HUGE section on slavery. And a HUGE section on the Civil War. And next to that a guy shelving books. He asked me if I needed help. I told him I was looking for the Reconstruction section.
He said, well, this section is in chronological order. So, it would be right behind me after the Civil War books. He stood aside, and there was a big empty bookshelf with just six books on one shelf. That was it — and those books weren't really even on Reconstruction. It was a pretty weak effort. He knew it and offered his apologies. — Don Allen, Library Technician, Washington, D.C.
The @ZinnEdProject study described here is *excellent* -- skillfully researched and written, describing the urgency of teaching Reconstruction and getting it right. And very smart on state "standards"; why they matter but why they shouldn't. Thanks @OBWax. https://t.co/LOake6dhXM
— Kate Masur (@katemasur) January 12, 2022
Whether you teach U.S. History in your classroom or not, the Reconstruction report offers a rich and nuanced account of the period and illuminates connections to current attempts across the United States to restrict the teaching of accurate history. Highly recommended reading! — Sherri Spelic in Bending the Arc: A Social Justice Newsletter for Educators
We have used elements of the report in re-framing a course not taught at the university in about two decades. That course dedicates the second half of its curriculum to making links between the Reconstruction period and Civil Rights efforts throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. The students in this course are chiefly future elementary and early childhood education majors.
The material is also utilized in our teacher candidate program for history majors intending to teach middle and high school. — Nicholas Aieta, professor and history education program coordinator, Westfield State University, Westfield, Massachusetts
reflections
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