Text to Text
Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.
Although Reconstruction took place 150 years ago, its echoes are still being felt across the country — in the campus protests, the Black Lives Matter movement, an entrenched racial economic inequality and a longstanding voting rights battle. What happened during the post-Civil War period, and how we understand what happened, matters.
In this Text to Text lesson, we pair Eric Foner’s Op-Ed essay “Why Reconstruction Matters” with an excerpt from W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1935 book “Black Reconstruction in America.” Both document how biased historiography from the early 20th century has helped to perpetuate inequality and injustice for generations of Americans.
Background
Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University and the author of “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877,” wrote an Op-Ed essay in The Times for the 150th anniversary of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. He states that the Reconstruction period is often misunderstood, even today, in no small part because of an influential campaign during the early 20th century of biased historical scholarship that dismissed African-Americans as unequal human beings and sympathized with a campaign of white supremacy that had overtaken the South. Mr. Foner writes that William Dunning, who was a Columbia University professor decades before, and his many students “provided an intellectual foundation for the system of segregation and black disenfranchisement that followed Reconstruction.”
W.E.B. Du Bois directly challenged the Dunning school of thought in his 1935 book “Black Reconstruction in America,” and in the final chapter, titled “The Propaganda of History,” he catalogs the long campaign of bias and misinformation promoted by these influential historians. He writes that “in propaganda against the Negro since emancipation in this land, we face one of the most stupendous efforts the world ever saw to discredit human beings, an effort involving universities, history, science, social life and religion.”
We pair these two texts because they help students consider the dangers of biased historical scholarship and the relevance of Reconstruction today. The 14-minute video above, produced by Facing History and Ourselves, provides background on the contested historiography of Reconstruction through interviews with several historians, including Mr. Foner. In the Going Further section, we suggest additional ways students can look at Reconstruction, including by analyzing school textbooks and thinking about how the era should be commemorated.
Key Questions:
- How can historical scholarship serve as a powerful, if often invisible, weapon?
- How is Reconstruction still relevant today?
- Was Reconstruction a success or a failure? Why?
Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:
Excerpt 1: From ‘Why Reconstruction Matters’ by Eric Foner, The New York Times, March 28, 2015
The surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, 150 years ago next month, effectively ended the Civil War. Preoccupied with the challenges of our own time, Americans will probably devote little attention to the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction, the turbulent era that followed the conflict. This is unfortunate, for if any historical period deserves the label “relevant,” it is Reconstruction.
Issues that agitate American politics today — access to citizenship and voting rights, the relative powers of the national and state governments, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism — all of these are Reconstruction questions. But that era has long been misunderstood.
Reconstruction refers to the period, generally dated from 1865 to 1877, during which the nation’s laws and Constitution were rewritten to guarantee the basic rights of the former slaves, and biracial governments came to power throughout the defeated Confederacy. For decades, these years were widely seen as the nadir in the saga of American democracy. According to this view, Radical Republicans in Congress, bent on punishing defeated Confederates, established corrupt Southern governments presided over by carpetbaggers (unscrupulous Northerners who ventured south to reap the spoils of office), scalawags (Southern whites who supported the new regimes) and freed African-Americans, unfit to exercise democratic rights. The heroes of the story were the self-styled Redeemers, who restored white supremacy to the South.
This portrait, which received scholarly expression in the early-20th-century works of William A. Dunning and his students at Columbia University, was popularized by the 1915 film “Birth of A Nation” and by Claude Bowers’s 1929 best-selling history, “The Tragic Era.” It provided an intellectual foundation for the system of segregation and black disenfranchisement that followed Reconstruction. Any effort to restore the rights of Southern blacks, it implied, would lead to a repeat of the alleged horrors of Reconstruction.
Historians have long since rejected this lurid account, although it retains a stubborn hold on the popular imagination. Today, scholars believe that if the era was “tragic,” it was not because Reconstruction was attempted but because it failed.
The Op-Ed essay concludes:
Citizenship, rights, democracy — as long as these remain contested, so will the necessity of an accurate understanding of Reconstruction. More than most historical subjects, how we think about this era truly matters, for it forces us to think about what kind of society we wish America to be.
Excerpt 2: From ‘Black Reconstruction in America’ by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1935
Mr. Du Bois asks, “What are American children taught today about Reconstruction?”
He writes:
… [A]n American youth attending college today would learn from current textbooks of history that the Constitution recognized slavery; that the chance of getting rid of slavery by peaceful methods was ruined by the Abolitionists; that after the period of Andrew Jackson, the two sections of the United States “had become fully conscious of their conflicting interests. Two irreconcilable forms of civilization … in the North, the democratic … in the South, a more stationary and aristocratic civilization.” He would read that Harriet Beecher Stowe brought on the Civil War; that the assault on Charles Sumner was due to his “coarse invective” against a South Carolina Senator; and that Negroes were the only people to achieve emancipation with no effort on their part. That Reconstruction was a disgraceful attempt to subject white people to ignorant Negro rule.
He continues:
In other words, he would in all probability complete his education without any idea of the part which the black race has played in America; of the tremendous moral problem of abolition; of the cause and meaning of the Civil War and the relation which Reconstruction had to democratic government and the labor movement today.
He writes:
War and especially civil strife leave terrible wounds. It is the duty of humanity to heal them. It was therefore soon conceived as neither wise nor patriotic to speak of all the causes of strife and the terrible results to which national differences in the United States had led. And so, first of all, we minimized the slavery controversy which convulsed the nation from the Missouri Compromise down to the Civil War. On top of that, we passed by Reconstruction with a phrase of regret or disgust.
But are these reasons of courtesy and philanthropy sufficient for denying Truth? If history is going to be scientific, if the record of human action is going to be set down with the accuracy and faithfulness of detail which will allow its use as a measuring rod and guidepost for the future of nations, there must be set some standards of ethics in research and interpretation.
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 give up the idea of history as a science or as an art using the results of science, and 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”; and to point out the danger in such misinformation. It is indeed extremely doubtful if any permanent benefit comes to the world through such action. Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?
Read the entire chapter titled “The Propaganda of History” (PDF) »
For Writing or Discussion
- How does historians’ view of Reconstruction today differ from the viewpoint promoted by the Dunning school of thought in the early 20th century?
- Why do you think the historiography of Reconstruction has been so contested?
- Why was the Reconstruction era “tragic,” according to Mr. Foner? How was it successful in addressing the injustice and inequality perpetuated by a system of widespread legal slavery? How and why did it ultimately fail to fulfill its promise?
- Mr. Du Bois labels the scholarship produced by the Dunning school of thought “propaganda.” Do you agree? And can the writing of history, when done for the purpose of propaganda, be dangerous to a civil and democratic society?
- Mr. Du Bois asks whether the discipline of history should be used to tell the truth, no matter what “frightful wrongs” or “hideous mistakes” it reveals. Do you agree? Or would you make the counterargument that a primary purpose of history education is to inflate our national ego?
- Does how we understand the Reconstruction era matter today? Does our understanding of the past influence our choices in the present? Why?
Going Further
1. Go Deeper: In its online materials and resource book “The Reconstruction Era and the Fragility of Democracy” (registration is required to access the free unit), Facing History and Ourselves uses the video above as well as the same excerpt from “Black Reconstruction in America” to engage students in conversations about the implications of how history is remembered. The resource book provides a close reading guide with text-dependent questions for the Du Bois excerpt, and the online materials include six additional Reconstruction videos and related lessons, as well as a collection of primary source documents.
All of the resources help students use their study of Reconstruction to address these two writing tasks:
- Argumentative Writing Prompt: Laws are the most important factor in overcoming discrimination. Support, refute or modify this statement.
- Informative Writing Prompt: The historian Eric Foner calls Reconstruction “America’s unfinished revolution.” What debates and dilemmas from the Reconstruction era remain unresolved?
2. Analyze Textbooks: The Dunning perspective on Reconstruction was not just an intellectual exercise batted around in ivory towers — indeed, it dominated how Reconstruction was covered in history textbooks for generations of American schoolchildren.
The New York Public Library provides a lesson plan that spotlights how Reconstruction is covered in two textbooks, both available online. The first, “California State Series New Grammar School History of the United States” (1903), was heavily influenced by the Dunning school of thought. The second, “The Americans” (2012), is a new, revised history. Alternatively, students can compare the “New Grammar School History” with their own United States history textbook. The lesson asks students to look at various excerpts in each textbook and provides a series of guided reading questions (PDF).
After analyzing the textbooks, students should consider: Why is social studies education important? Why does the historiography on which textbooks are based matter?
3. Hold a Structured Academic Controversy: Stanford History Education Group’s Reading Like a Historian curriculum includes a lesson focused on the question Were African-Americans free during Reconstruction? The lesson uses five primary source documents, including constitutional amendments, a Black Code and a personal account of a former slave. Students are asked to hold a Structured Academic Controversy discussing the focus question, before considering whether Reconstruction was a success or failure.
4. Commemorate Reconstruction: While the Civil War is commemorated extensively in the United States, and especially in the South, Reconstruction hasn’t received a similar treatment. Mr. Foner writes:
Reconstruction has long been misrepresented, or simply neglected, in our schools, and unlike Confederate generals and founders of the Ku Klux Klan, few if any monuments exist to the black and white leaders of that era.
Room for Debate asked a panel that included Mr. Foner, “How should Americans remember Reconstruction?” The contributors suggested a range of ideas, from building memorials to establishing truth commissions, strengthening legislation that protects the voting rights for blacks and other minorities, instituting a national holiday and setting up national parks. Read the various recommendations, and then write a letter to your elected representatives advocating the idea or ideas you think are best.