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Book Giveaway for Your Reconstruction Teaching Story

September 30, 2024

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Thanks to a donation of 25 books from the University of North Carolina Press, we can offer you a copy of historian Kate Masur and illustrator Liz Clarke’s new graphic history, Freedom Was in Sight: A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, D.C., Region, for your story on teaching about Reconstruction.

It could be a story about using one of our lessons for middle and high school on Reconstruction or how you have introduced the report, Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction, to your high school or teacher education students.

In appreciation for your time, we will send you a free copy of Freedom Was in Sight. This offer lasts until we run out of copies — so don’t wait to submit your story. Note that we are only able to send books within the continental United States, so please provide a mailing address therein.

Read some of the comments we’ve received to date from teachers across the country.

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Find lessons on Reconstruction and additional resources below.

Related Resources
Teaching Activities (Free)

Reconstructing the South: A Role Play

Lesson. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
This role play engages students in thinking about what freedpeople needed in order to achieve — and sustain — real freedom following the Civil War. It’s followed by a chapter from the book Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution.

Teaching Activities (Free)

Reconstructing the South: What Really Happened

Teaching Activity. By Mimi Eisen and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. 47 pages.
A follow-up lesson to “Reconstructing the South,” using primary source documents to reveal key outcomes of the Reconstruction era.

Five Black women who served as officers of the Women’s League in Newport, Rhode Island.
Teaching Activities (Free)

Teaching the Reconstruction Revolution: Picturing and Celebrating the First Era of Black Power

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. 2022. Rethinking Schools.
A lesson that help students understand, imagine, and celebrate the Reconstruction period as the first era of Black power in the United States.

Frances Harper, William Sylvis, Isaac Myers, and John Roy Lynch pictured. They were leaders of the Reconstruction Era in US history
Teaching Activities (Free)

When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez and Nqobile Mthethwa. 25 pages.
A mixer role play explores the connections between different social movements during Reconstruction.

Reconstruction montage
Teaching Activities (Free)

Who Killed Reconstruction? A Trial Role Play

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. 2022. Rethinking Schools
A role play about the demise of Reconstruction that helps students get beyond the question “Was Reconstruction a success or failure?”

Teaching Activities (Free)

40 Acres and a Mule: Role-Playing What Reconstruction Could Have Been

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools, 2020.
This multimedia, creative role play introduces students to the ways African American life changed immediately after the Civil War by focusing on the Sea Islands before and during Reconstruction.

Articles

Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction

Article. By Ana Rosado, Gideon Cohn-Postar, and Mimi Eisen. 2022. 44 pages.
The report includes assessments of education standards in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, along with findings and recommendations for how to improve instruction on Reconstruction.

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