Virginia
Reconstruction Vignette
| We now, as a people desires to be elevated, and we desires to do all we can to be educated, and we hope our friends will aid us all they can. . . . I may state to all our friends, and to all our enemies, that we has a right to the land where we are located. For why? I tell you. Our wives, our children, our husbands, has been sold over and over again to purchase the lands we now locate upon; for that reason we have a divine right to the land. . . . And then didn’t we clear the land and raise the crops of corn, of cotton, of tobacco, of rice, of sugar, of everything? And then didn’t them large cities in the North grow up on the cotton and the sugars and the rice that we made? Yes! I appeal to the South and the North if I hasn’t spoken the words of truth. I say they have grown rich, and my people is poor. |
In 1866, the U.S. Army forcibly removed a Virginia freedman named Bayley Wyatt from the land he had maintained since the close of the Civil War. Shortly thereafter, at a public meeting, Wyatt protested his eviction and advocated for freedpeople’s claims to the land they inhabited.
Source: Facing History & Ourselves
Virginia
Standards Overview
Coverage of Reconstruction: Partial
ZEP Standards Rubric Score: 1.5 out of 10
The coverage of Reconstruction in Virginia’s standards is partial, and their content is dreadful. The Virginia Department of Education adopted the current History and Social Science Standards of Learning and Curriculum Framework in 2015. The Standards and Curriculum Framework are separate documents — the standards broadly outline what students should learn while the curriculum framework provides “greater specificity [of] the minimum content that all teachers should teach and all students should learn.”
The Virginia Board of Education is currently reviewing and revising the History and Social Science Standards of Learning. The Board of Education anticipates that the revision process will be completed in November 2022.
Middle School and High School
Beyond grade 3, Virginia social studies standards are organized by course and not by grade level.
The Virginia Studies course spans the precolonial era to the present. There are three standards focused on Reconstruction that ask students to:
Identify the effects of Reconstruction on life in Virginia.
Identify the effects of segregation and “Jim Crow” on life in Virginia for American Indians, whites, and African Americans.
Describe the importance of railroads, new industries, and the growth of cities to Virginia’s economic development.
The course on U.S. history covers “pre-Columbian times until 1865.” Students are expected to describe “the effects of war from the perspectives of Union and Confederate soldiers (including African American soldiers), women, and enslaved African Americans.”
Another course on U.S. history spans 1865 to the present. This course includes more specifics under an overarching standard asking students to understand the effects of Reconstruction on American life. Students are expected to:
Analyze the impact of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States and how they changed the meaning of citizenship.
Describe the impact of Reconstruction policies on the South and North.
Describe the legacies of Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and Frederick Douglass.
A course on Virginia and U.S. history also touches on Reconstruction. Those standards say students should:
Evaluate postwar Reconstruction plans presented by key leaders of the Civil War.
Evaluate and explain the political and economic impact of the war and Reconstruction, including the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
Educator Experiences
Virginia teachers who responded to our survey noted that due to pacing issues, Reconstruction is frequently not adequately covered in their courses. One middle school history teacher explained that Reconstruction “is often squeezed in as part of the Civil War, or skipped entirely.”
It is up to teachers to prioritize Reconstruction, and some are making a concerted effort to teach the era in their classrooms. Teachers who responded to our survey said they used resources from Facing History and the Stanford History Education Group to create activities and DBQs about Reconstruction. A middle school history teacher from Alexandria explained that teaching Reconstruction is critical because it provides students with an opportunity to “consider what could have been, those who tried to create a different kind of country, and trace how the ramifications lead to decisions across the 20th Century.”
One middle school teacher noted that the standards do an adequate job covering Reconstruction, but another middle school teacher said that the standards “could include more about African American communities that established themselves.”
A February 2022 article by Sierra Jenkins in the Virginian-Pilot describes the approach of a Newport News teacher,
When Conor Collins teaches his Advanced Placement U.S. History class, he asks students to think about some of the challenges Black people could have faced during Reconstruction after American enslavement was abolished.
He talks about when Black people could participate in the American political sphere for the first time. But he also talks about the backlash in the southern states through the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and exploitative legislation such as the Black Codes.
Assessment
The current Virginia social studies standards are inadequate and fail to deeply engage with the history of Reconstruction. There is very little mention of Black people’s experiences, politics, and lives.
Virginia’s recently convened Commission on African American History Education in the Commonwealth had similar findings. The Commission released a report in August 2020 arguing that “while revised regularly by historians and experts, Virginia’s History and Social Science Standards of Learning continue to be incomplete with regards to incorporating African American history in the larger narrative” of U.S. History.
The Commission’s proposed edits to the Virginia standards include “information added and corrected in the U.S. history curriculum on the topics of slavery, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, lynching, and other important matters in African American history that had been omitted or distorted.” The Commission has proposed many changes to the standards on Reconstruction to better highlight Black people’s political mobilization and emphasize Black historical figures, including Mary Bowser, John Mercer Langston, and Robert Smalls.
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 January 2022, Gov. Glenn Youngkin took office and immediately signed an executive order prohibiting “divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory” in classrooms. Youngkin’s administration then set up a tip line for students’ family members to report teachers who they believe are “behaving objectionably.”
Proposed bills HB1126 and HB1032 would also allow parents to opt their children out of certain instructional materials and approve library materials, and HB1068 and HB787 similarly target teaching about racism or sexism in schools. These bills have not passed, but their introduction is still troubling.
Several respondents to our survey expressed concern about the possible chilling effects on classroom education that such measures can have around the country, particularly on discussions of the history and legacies of Reconstruction.
moments in Reconstruction history
This short list of events in Virginia’s Reconstruction history is from the Zinn Education Project This Day in History collection. We welcome your suggestions for more.
April 1865 Civil War Officially Ends
The U.S. Civil War ended when the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in south-central Virginia.
May 1865 Black Virginians Cast Freedom Ballots
On election day in Norfolk, African Americans tested their right to vote and when denied, cast their own “freedom ballots.”
June 1865 Norfolk’s Black Community Presents Address for Equal Rights
The Colored Monitor Union Club organized and released their address for equal rights in Norkfolk, Virginia, soon after the Civil War ended.
April 1867 Richmond Streetcar Protest
African Americans in Richmond, Virginia organized protests against segregated streetcars.
Feb. 1868 Kate Brown Blocked from Seat in Ladies’ Car and Assaulted
An employee of the U.S. Senate, Kate Brown found political support from Sen. Charles Sumner and others in Congress when she was violently removed from the ladies' car, which was segregated illegally.
African Americans voters were threatened after the Danville Riot, leading to their loss of political power in this majority African American city in Virginia.