Since last January, thirty-six states have taken steps to limit the teaching of racism, white supremacy, and white privilege—concepts that conservatives have mistakenly labeled as critical race theory (CRT). With the support of rich Republican donors, fourteen states have passed bills that outright ban discussing these topics in the classroom.
But, as much as they amount to an attack on free speech (and on history itself), the anti-CRT effort may not actually make that much of a difference in terms of what gets taught in classrooms, as new research shows that many K-12 educators are already ill-prepared to talk to their students about the roots of racial injustice.
A 2018 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center highlights that schools are not adequately teaching the history of American slavery, educators are not sufficiently prepared to teach it, and textbooks do not have enough material about it. As a result, students lack a basic knowledge of the important role slavery played in shaping the United States and the impact it continues to have on race relations.
More recently, 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.
The Reconstruction era is filled with great lessons of perseverance, fortitude, and resolve.
According to the Zinn Education Project’s data, school districts have failed to cover Reconstruction adequately, as well as address its enduring legacies or to make connections to the present. The report also suggests that teachers are concerned that ongoing political efforts to ban “controversial topics” from the classroom may make discussing Reconstruction even more difficult.
During Reconstruction, Congressional Republicans passed the Reconstruction Acts to secure equal rights for Black people, including the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments along with numerous civil rights acts. Today’s Republican Party, meanwhile, restricts equal rights for Black people, such as blocking an anti-lynching law, police reform bill, or voting rights protections.
In addition, the Reconstruction era is filled with great lessons of perseverance, fortitude, and resolve. Such lessons are found in the lives of great heroes of American (and Black) history, like the story of Robert Smalls.
Smalls was born enslaved in South Carolina, a member of the coastal Gullah community. On early morning of May 13, 1862, Smalls took command of a Confederate ship, the CSS Planter, after three Confederate commanders left the boat to spend the night ashore. Sailing out to the Union blockade, he tricked Confederate ships as he passed them by mimicking the mannerisms of his ship’s captain.
Smalls led that crew and their families to freedom, surrendering the Planter to the U.S. Navy. He later served as a U.S. Navy captain during the Civil War, and as a member of both the South Carolina House and Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.
Perhaps most importantly, the history of Reconstruction teaches us the past so we can better analyze the present and carve out a future that includes sharing power with people of color, especially Black people.
President Joe Biden’s election was made possible by the votes of Black people, particularly in Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. This helped inspire a white supremacist backlash in the form of a the January 6 insurrection. What we’re experiencing today, which is a war against a multiracial democracy, is nothing new.
This means learning about and discussing white supremacy as the backbone of public policy, the free market, and jurisprudence.
Nevertheless, most people living in the United States know shockingly little about the policies, people, conflicts, and ideas that shaped Reconstruction and its aftermath, much less how they are connected to today.
Without an understanding of Reconstruction, we would fail to link what we saw on January 6 to the bullets, nooses, laws, threats, politicians, and vigilantes who worked to overturn multiracial democracy in the South for a century.
It’s no accident that conservative politicians are fighting to prevent the teaching of “CRT,” because teaching the truth of U.S. history requires exploration and explanation of the United States as a white settler colonial project rooted in genocide and enslavement that informs our present day society.
This means learning about and discussing white supremacy as the backbone of public policy, the free market, and jurisprudence that have historically oppressed and marginalized Black people and other people of color.
Exploring and explaining Reconstruction would compel a new generation of students to challenge the status quo. As Dr. W.E.B. DuBois wrote in Black Reconstruction:
“If, on the other hand, we are going to use history for our pleasure and amusement, for inflating our national ego, and giving us a false but pleasurable sense of accomplishment, then we must . . . admit frankly that we are using a version of historic fact in order to influence and educate the new generation along the way we wish. It is propaganda like this that has led men in the past to insist that history is ‘lies agreed upon.’”
Our children must learn the truth of our history, not the lies some people in power have agreed upon.