COVERAGE

In recent political debates over how to teach U.S. history, the subject of slavery has loomed large. Long-documented omissions and misrepresentations in lessons have left students with incomplete understandings of the period.

In the aftermath of the insurrection a year ago at the U.S. Capitol, many leading historians drew parallels between the violence and the Reconstruction era, the period of political revolution directly following the American Civil War.

A new report from the nonprofit Zinn Education Project found that 45 states have insufficient or non-existent lesson coverage of Reconstruction in schools. Historians warn that eclipsing the aftermath of the Civil War will lead students to be uninformed about the seeds of racial inequity today.

The Zinn Education Project published a study revealing that schools are not only missing the mark on slavery but also in teaching lessons on the Reconstruction era. Reconstruction, the post-Civil War period from 1865 to 1877, was marked by formerly enslaved people who fought to secure their economic, social, political, and cultural future while living in the land of their captors.

Reconstruction was the era in which 4 million newly emancipated people seized their freedom (to borrow from the evocative title of Dr. Kidada Williams’ fantastic podcast, Seizing Freedom). In thousands of acts of creation, both individual and collective, humble and grand, formerly enslaved people and their allies sought to build the world anew. In the words of Frederick Douglass, the era offered “nothing less than a radical revolution.”

In 2016, the National Park Service described Reconstruction as “one of the most complicated, poorly understood, and significant periods in American history. Even as ongoing crises with obvious links to the Reconstruction era continue to reinforce its significance today, most people living in the United States know shockingly little about the policies, people, conflicts, and ideas that shaped Reconstruction and its aftermath.

The progressive Zinn Education Project has a new report out on the state of Reconstruction education in American schools. Here is a list of the report’s authors and advisors

As part of Black History Month, the Zinn Education Project has released a new report on how the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era is taught in American history classes in the United States. It is part of the ZEP campaign to encourage and support history and social studies teachers who “Teach the Truth” about racism in United States history and its defense of Critical Race Theory as an academic discipline. The National Park Service describes the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era, roughly 1865 to 1877, as “one of the most complicated, poorly understood, and significant periods in American history.”

Currently nearly 4 out of 10 students in the U.S. are being impacted by CRT/1619 Project bans and a rising tide of book censorship. Many educators are being silenced, often fearing (rightfully) for their careers.