Petition to School Boards to Teach Reconstruction

Thank YOU! This is important work.

For well over a century in most schools in our nation Reconstruction was little more than a passing footnote to the aftermath of the Civil War. Even that was used as racist propaganda based on the book the Klansman & the movie Birth of A Nation rather than factual history. Those lies were the basis for the rationale of of the violent oppression of the Jim Crow era and its present extension known as the New Jim Crow Era. Outside of Slavery itself, the destruction of Reconstruction was the largest mistake our country ever made. We wasted the best opportunity to right the wrongs of slavery and instead allowed slavery to continue under a different fictious name of separate but equal. That allowed racism to spread like an insidious cancer through the very fabric of our nation therefore invalidate the very premise of our society i.e. Democracy. To rectify that damage, the public education system must change from being a an enabler to the perpetuation of racism, to an ally, we can trust, to help rid this evil of racism from our country. Only then will Ametica even begin to fulfill its proclamation that ALL people are created equal & have the equal rights to the pursuit of happiness.

Americans' ignorance of the complete history of this country causes harm to marginalized people, especially Black and Indigenous people. As a retired educator, I feel that we cannot keep this history from our students. It is educational malpractice.

The Reconstruction period is massively overlooked in typical US history classes, but provides perhaps the most meaningful insight into how our society looks today in terms of race and class divisions than any other American historical period!

Formerly enslaved people created and cherished beautiful communities during the Reconstruction era. This time period needs to be emphasized. The current timeline, without the Reconstruction era, leaves many successes out of the narrative. A balanced teaching of history must include all the stories, not just the injustice and oppression. Enslaved people fought back, organized, and rebelled. They found much success once freed. The success was violently crushed. The pattern repeated and continues to repeat. Please educate our children about the whole history and that history is still being made.

I teach the Reconstruction era--and have for because our fragmented culture today is the legacy of the on-going Civil War in the United States.

Students deserve access to all the information from history, not just the events that support white supremacist narratives. If we really want to teach an unrevised history, the true stories of Reconstruction need to be included. The impacts of that era are still evident today.