In popular culture, the most memorable depiction of Reconstruction was D.W. Griffith's film, Birth of a Nation. Scalawags and carbetbaggers conspire with newly freed Blacks to ruin the South until the Ku Klux Klan arrives to save the day.

Missing from this racist portrait of Reconstruction ---- and from too many textbooks ---- was the extraordinary experiment in grassroots multiracial democracy this period represented ---- land reform, public schools, expanded voting rights, greater equality.

Reconstruction was the key turning point in U.S. history ---- a period of democratic promise like no other. But a promise foreclosed by the terrorism of the defeated white elites seeking to hold on to "their" South.

The Zinn Education Project commemorates the Reconstruction period with new curriculum. We have just posted a new lesson, " Reconstructing the South: A Role Play," written by Zinn Education Project co-director Bill Bigelow. It is accompanied by a chapter on land reform in the post-Civil War South from the American Social History Project's important book, Freedom's Unfinished Revolution.

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Your support makes it possible to offer hundreds of free lessons ---- such as "Reconstructing the South: A Role Play"---- to 65,000 teachers to help teach outside the textbook.

New from Rethinking Schools

New Issue of Rethinking Schools Magazine
The Winter 2016/17 issue of Rethinking Schools features articles and lessons on the politics of language, student identity, teaching about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and much more. Most of the lessons and articles on the Zinn Education Project website are from Rethinking Schools.

 

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