Vermont
Reconstruction Vignette
| The overshadowing question of the day is that of negro suffrage. The large majority of Republicans feel that reconstruction without giving the negro the ballot, will deprive us of the laurals fairly won in battle by patriot blood, and leaves the negro question still unsettled. It matters not that the negro does not vote in all the free states, that even in some of the states of New England, the law is partial and unjust. . . . The Southerners to day, believe that without the aid of the blacks, the North could not have conquered. They are exceedingly mad against them, and if the negro is not allowed the ballot they will oppress him all they dare, and more than will be safe for it will lead to resistance, to endless trouble, to quarrels, and the shedding of blood, and the peace which we have all been praying for will not come. . . . All the silly twaddle about the negro voting as the master directs, may go for what it is worth. We remember how in years gone by that we were repeatedly told that the negro would only fight for his master. Strange that you cannot beat the truth into some skulls. |
On June 30, 1865, The Vermonter in Vergennes, Vermont, published an editorial on Black suffrage. In this excerpt, the author argued that African Americans in the South were loyal to the U.S. during the Civil War and deserved the power and protection of political representation. He also noted the importance of Black suffrage to Republican aims for Reconstruction in the South, even as some states in New England continued to bar African American residents from voting.
Source: Newspapers.com
Vermont
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Nonexistent
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 0 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Vermont’s standards is nonexistent. Vermont phased out the state Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities in 2017 when they adopted the College, Career and Civic Life C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards. It is up to districts to create their own graduation proficiency requirements based on the C3 Framework. Currently, there are no state social studies standards in Vermont.
The C3 Framework says that it “is intended to serve as a resource for states to consider as they upgrade their existing state social studies standards.” The C3 Framework is not content-specific but rather provides skills-based expectations for students. By relying solely on the C3 Framework, Vermont provides no guidance on the content students should learn in the state.
With no content-based state standards to guide them, Vermont’s school districts seem to have largely handed off content decisions to individual schools. Each school thus determines how and when to cover Reconstruction. Essex High School, for example, mentions Reconstruction in its high school U.S. history course only once, requiring students to understand “how various Reconstruction plans either succeeded, or failed.”
Educator Experiences
Teachers who responded to our survey mentioned the lack of guidance from the state on teaching Reconstruction. One middle school teacher noted that “there are only common core and standards as a guideline. The curricula are created by school districts themselves and there is no scope and sequence or oversight as to who teaches what when (and how) and so teachers have a million reasons to overlook [Reconstruction.]” Another reported that because curriculum is set at the district level, “it is impossible to coordinate the teaching of any particular history. . . There are many different topics of History that are completely ignored and many that are overrepresented.”
A high school social studies teacher noted that pacing and timing present serious barriers to teaching Reconstruction. Because the topic “falls at the end of the 10th-grade curriculum and the start of the 11th-grade curriculum, so it sometimes gets short-changed at both ends depending on individual teachers’ priorities and comfort.”
Despite the challenges, teachers are making an effort to teach Reconstruction and often seek out resources beyond the textbook to self-educate and center the Reconstruction era. Teachers who responded to our survey mentioned that they draw on lessons from the Zinn Education Project and Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance). One high school social studies teacher explained that they prioritized teaching Reconstruction because it “illustrates to students that there was a moment where the U.S. could have taken a different route and aggressively chose not to. It also dispels some myths about whether there were qualified Black folks to serve in positions of power.”
Manchester high school Humanities teacher Bethany Hobbs spoke to the importance of including Reconstruction in the state standards, “When a teacher chooses to prioritize Reconstruction, it becomes much easier to target this person in this contemporary witch hunt where misunderstandings and misuse of Critical Race Theory run rampant. If Vermont would take a stand to prioritize this information, teachers would be encouraged to learn more about it and would experience more protection in their efforts to teach the truth.”
Assessment
Vermont’s state standards on Reconstruction are nonexistent. According to our survey results, educators in the state can and do take advantage of the lack of content-based standards to center Reconstruction in their teaching. The lack of guidance from the state, however, means that the amount that students learn about Reconstruction is wholly dependent on whether their district or teacher chooses to prioritize it.
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.