This roundtable will introduce the findings, recommendations, and resources from the report, Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction. The report includes assessments of education standards in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Endorsed by Eric Foner and other leading scholars of the U.S. history, this is the first national assessment of the teaching of Reconstruction.

The report grew out of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach Reconstruction campaign and enters into a larger national conversation over how we teach, understand, and use history. It looks at state social studies standards and local curricula as one piece of why Reconstruction education is so poorly understood; assesses standards and curricula using the Zinn Education Project’s standards of what a complex and truthful history of Reconstruction should include; and shares key findings on Reconstruction education and recommendations for improvement. It also features educator experiences and teachable vignettes of Reconstruction history across the country.

The report findings document how state standards on the Reconstruction era and its legacies are at best inadequate. In more than a dozen states, they reflect century-old Dunning School distortions, which were used for decades to justify denying Black Americans full citizenship. Each state assessment also addresses current anti-history bills that add further barriers to teaching this history. The goal of the report is to advocate for more attention to Reconstruction in K-12 curricula and classrooms.

The scholars for this session include people who are teaching or influencing teaching about Reconstruction in higher education, at the school district level, in the classroom, and at an historic site. They include one co-author and three contributors to the report. The roundtable would be of most interest to historians studying education, professors working with K-12 in-service or pre-service teachers, and anyone working in K-12 education.

The session will open with small group discussions among participants about their own experiences of learning about Reconstruction, followed by an overview of the findings. This will allow participants to examine how much or little has changed from their own K-12 education.

The scholars will present briefly on key aspects of the report, including the dominance of the Lost Cause narrative in public memory, examples of teachers subverting the traditional curriculum, and the role of school districts and higher education in making change.

Next, participants will receive state assessments to discuss in small groups. Each assessment includes a score for the state standards, analysis, and stories from teachers about how they are teaching beyond the standards and textbook narratives. Participants will discuss the significance of the respective assessment they are examining and how to advance the recommendations, particularly in light of the anti-history education bills and laws.

The full group will reconvene to discuss insights, questions, and ideas.