One of the more interesting recommendations of the Zinn Education Project report on the teaching of Reconstruction is that teachers should “Foreground the meaning of freedom to African Americans.” According to the report, a lot of high school and middle school history classes address Reconstruction through the actions of white elites. Presidential policies and Congressional legislation were, of course, important, but so were Black efforts to redefine freedom, build families, and create institutions that belonged to them. Here is what the report says:
Foreground the meaning of freedom to African Americans and the actions they took to realize it.
The momentum of Reconstruction and the radical promise it held stemmed from grassroots Black organizing. Standards and curricula must center Black people’s efforts to redefine freedom across economic, political, and social realms during and after the Civil War. They should delineate the many ways Black people reconstituted their communities and made advances for multiracial democracy, such as:
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Fighting for access to land and fair labor, as well as the rights to vote; sit on juries; hold office; and otherwise participate in political, economic, and legal systems. Many standards and curricula frame Reconstruction from political and legal angles, but typically focus on branches of government, states, and amendments while neglecting the profound actions of ordinary people. Black people’s political mobilization and efforts to secure their own land and labor fundamentally transformed the nature of U.S. citizenship and must be treated accordingly. Their struggle for economic agency under racial capitalism should also be acknowledged outright, as it shaped many disparities in power framed as purely political in nature.
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Championing statewide public education, autonomous worship and mutual aid organizations, affirmation of familial ties. Some standards and curricula mention strides in education as an aim of the Freedmen’s Bureau, but do not adequately acknowledge the revolutionary nature of widely accessible, state-funded public school systems and their origins in Black frameworks for civic life. They should, in fact, prioritize the many ways African Americans asserted their autonomy and nurtured their kin during Reconstruction. Founding Black churches and mutual aid societies, finding loved ones separated in slavery, and formalizing partnerships were all actions rooted in care, justice, and opportunity. These values and efforts have informed movements and institutions for generations since.
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Cultivating everyday joy and entertainment, artistic expression and creative pursuits. Virtually nonexistent in most standards and curricula, and indeed many other outlines or retellings of Reconstruction, is any mention of the ways African Americans expressed their connections to each other, themselves, and the world around them through habitual acts of joy and creativity. Questions of equality during Reconstruction often turn to entitlements like life and liberty, while sidelining the very real, present, everyday pursuit of happiness. Picnics in parks, concerts at churches, and crafts honed at home all exemplify a flowering Black culture grounded in liberation. Against the backdrop of white supremacy, such celebrations of humanity and vitality also signified resilience. They must be introduced as intrinsic to the history of Reconstruction.
