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Reconstruction did not simply end, nor was it simply defeated. As African Americans sought to end racial injustice, they were met by a white supremacist backlash.

Standards and curricula often mention the KKK, the Black Codes, and Jim Crow laws, but they fail to name white supremacy as the root of these attacks on Reconstruction.

Reconstruction was not a “failure.” Students should learn that specific white supremacist individuals, organizations, and systems actively defeated it.

A freedmen's school set to flames by white mob in 1866 in Memphis.

The racialized nature of capitalism in the United States cannot be understood without tracing it back to Reconstruction.

Standards and curricula should address, for instance, how Northern elites and the Republican Party cared more about their own financial interests than racial justice. Northern industrialists built railroads on public lands seized in the South. As workers challenged their exploitation, Northern and Southern elites united against them. Many people who had once supported the federal government’s protection of the rights of African Americans turned away to promote their own economic interests.

The report includes 10 Points Everyone Should Learn About Reconstruction.

Check out this free math literacy conference. See the overview of sessions, including one on teaching about the Civil Rights Movement.

The African American Policy Forum’s Critical Race Theory (CRT) Summer School will return July 18 to July 22, 2022, with the theme of Teaching Truth to Power. Presenters include Gloria Ladson Billings, Marc Lamont Hill, Nancy MacLean, Janai Nelson, and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. Zinn Ed Project team members will lead workshops. Learn more and register. 

For more than 35 years, Rethinking Schools has provided resources, inspiration, and analysis to help make schools — and the broader society — more just and equal. To further this work, they are beginning a search for an Executive Director. Are you interested? Do you know someone who might be?

See the full job description.

Your support is needed to help more students learn people’s history. Most of the Zinn Education Project’s funding comes from individuals like you.

Donors of $50 or more to the Teach Reconstruction campaign can request a print copy (44-page booklet) of the Reconstruction report.

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