Deconstructing Reconstruction – Fri 9/7
by Dr. H - September 7th, 2012
Today we voted to decide which “lens” we will use in each unit of the course this term. Our textbook (like most textbooks) takes a mainly political “lens,” so we will explore other aspects of American history in our workshops and class sessions to help supplement that perspective.
Update: On Monday 9/10 you’ll receive an updated and more detailed syllabus schedule based on these voting results. On the course Blackboard, I have added a short (ungraded) “Practice Quiz” so you can try out the online testing environment – it will be available until Tuesday the 11th under “Quizzes”. I have also added a new tab to this website (above) called “Slides” which will have a weekly “digest” of the PowerPoint slides. Read & study chapters 1-3 which are the background reading for the unit on 1875-1900.
Also today, we began a conversation about a very important period in American history: Reconstruction. There is no one simple definition of the word. The term has multiple meanings and historians disagree about the impact and legacy of the post-Civil War era. One view is that Reconstruction happened from the top down – that’s the interpretation put forward by this brief History Channel overview –
A different interpretation is that Reconstruction was part of a long history of African-American efforts to secure and define freedom for themselves (which is alluded to at the end of that clip). Different groups had very different goals for how the country should mend after the Civil War, and their goals were often at cross-purposes.
Find your own answers to these questions: Was Reconstruction a “failure” or a “success”, or some combination of the two? Who benefited and who lost? By 1877, in what ways had the U.S. been “reconstructed”?
