Constitution. You can hear more from robert byrd who served in the u. S. Senate for more than 50 years, this sunday at 5 00 eastern youre on American History tv on cspan3. At the annual Southern Historical association meeting, a group of professors discussed challenges and strategy for teaching the reconstruction era. They talk about sources and trying to find a balance between National History and local history in survey courses. [laughter] aaron good morning. My name is aaron dean, and i would like to welcome everybody to our panel this morning on teaching reconstruction. We are happy to have cspan here, which is not normally part of these panels. We will get going right on time. I will also explain first we will use this morning and then get out of the way. I will offer just a couple of to kind ofy remarks set things up, and then introduce our panelists, and then they will each talk for a short bit, we are hoping within the fiveminute range and i did not bring a cudgel, but every one seems pleasant. [laughter] will raise some questions, and then turn it all to you all, and hopefully you will left questions you want to ask of them. I have questions that we have been communicating before this, and it does seem like a Good Opportunity with the full house, which is what i would say we nine 30 panel to work through different ways to teach reconstruction. Well, wel also say do not have a passing mic, i think. We will probably be repeating questions as you will stand up, because we want to make sure that questions get on, for cspan people, that they can hear the questions as well. As historians in the civil war era are aware that reconstruction is defined as three times as much time as the civil war itself, though i do not know how many dedicate three times as much teaching space. I am certainly guilty of this. In the u. S. Survey course, it usually comes at the end of an exhaustive fall semester or in the opening moments of the spring, so the result is kind of a curious compression of the teaching of reconstruction, and this happens, i think, despite the importance of reconstruction to all of the great reformations happening in the middle of life in the middle decades of the 19th century. I think part of the challenge for teaching it lies in recognizing that reconstruction is both a process, political and economic and material, as well as cultural and, in many respects, emotional, and it is also a period during which there is a great deal happening. And so when we compress that, we undermine and undervalue reconstructions importance. Getting ready for this, i did a little back of the envelope calculation, so according to me and wikipedia, the u. S. Army has been an reconstruction mode for longer than it has been in fighting mode, so i count 60 years of active campaigning and 61 of active reconstruction, and i am not counting what could arguably be the decades of the philippines. How muchs no telling does not include any of the work done after the spanishamerican and filipino wars. This suggests the importance of reconstruction not just as a buttigieg following the as a period following the civil war, but that the american nation has been involved in reconstruction and doing reconstruction around the world for a very long time. Nowhere is it more true, as we then what americans flirted with a biracial democracy, created the modern partisan political order, constructed home grown terrorist newence, constructed a armed army against the plains indians, and these are issues that i think all of the panelists and you will will try taking into how we as teachers try to bring these elements together. Our task is not to make coherent sense of that. We are not trying to build a new synthesis of reconstruction here. Our job as a panel focusing on teaching reconstruction is introduce students to these open up and to conversations and help them find their way to answers, if we can also create a new synthesis, that would be great, and then we can coauthor a volume that will explain that. I suspect and said what we will do a sort of talk about it and open up opportunities here. We have a great group of people, so i wanted to reduce them and let them talk. I will introduce them in the order they are seated here. David pryor is an assistant professor of American History at the university of new mexico. His research and teaching focuses on the International Dimension of the American Civil War era. He is the author of between freedom and progress the lost world of reconstruction politics, just published from lsu, which is locally in the book exhibit, so look for that. Only last year the editor of reconstruction in a globalizing i can recommend, which is an edited collection looking at the International Dimensions of reconstruction. He is working on a second edited collection of reconstruction empire, and is in the early stages of a book on the adoption of the term reconstruction. Next to david is dana bird, a scholar of american art and material culture and an artstant professor of history. Most recently, she was the coauthor of with Frank H Goodyear of the catalogue camera , homer, and the photography, art, and painting. She is working on a manuscript. And artifacts of the reconstruction era transformation we spend way too much time at the southern on text, so it is great to have. Omeone here to look at images next to dana is amy taylor, the professor of history at the university of kentucky. She is the author of several works, most recent of which is embattled freedom. This is an outstanding book, and you do not have to take my word for it to anyone a slew of prizes last year, including a ground prize, which she will be honored this evening. Next to amy is lee williams, the scholar of africanAmerican Civil War, reconstruction history. Lee works as a Site Specialist thethe state of florida, at Armstrong Atlantic state university, and serves as a trustee at the Historic Savannah Foundation in savannah, georgia. He is the editor of the forthcoming peoples guide to nashville, which is a series of really creative local public histories that will be, i think, a value to those of us who travel around and want to do weird history things when we get to new cities. He is completing a biography on who was c gibbs, floridas africanamerican secretary of state during reconstruction. So it is a great panel, and we will look forward to your questions. Thank you. Pryor sure thing. Few quickg to read a thoughts that i composed over the last couple of days, so thank you, of course, for the opportunity to participate in this roundtable to it i will focus my very brief comments on opening up questions on how we frame reconstruction when we teach it. Most of what i do is conforms to al approachnvention to focus on civil rights. Questionsind the haunting me at night, or things that i ponder as i teach. The first question is is reconstruction inescapably history . I do not mean the notion of national identit, federal law, and states authority it clearly is but in a deeper sense, is it also the story of america as a coherent and unitary thing that moves through history . Are we, after the transnatural turn, still historians of a nation, and should we present ourselves to students as such . I can see good causes for answering affirmatively, including a liberal integrationist narratives of the United States, focusing on the quality of civil rights, and the centrality of unification to a literal meaning of the word reconstruction, to take a page from mark summers. I do have some concerns about the nation as a presumptive framework for comprehending any history, and especially if it means we are taking ourselves as scholars and teachers to be americans addressing americans. Im not so confident that we really know what and how often our students think of national identity. Along with it, i am cagey about the idea that we should use our students presumptive identities to try to make a historical narratives emotionally compelling to them. I would wager that we may be better off teaching reconstruction is something that took place at a time when the idea of the nation was pervasive and contested rather than as something that is about the nation. This leads me to my second question, which is do we get at the otherness of the past when teaching reconstruction . Are powerful linkages between now and then, including the statesanctioned murder of africanamericans, ornate versions of White Supremacy and campaigns to black voting, all of which warrants attention, but i also warrants, when teaching undergraduates, to balance these connections with the sense of a goal that separates today from the mid19th century. I have recently been teaching the cultural history ku klux , and i was struck by how well it caption captures both te continuities and the gulfs that existed now event. To paraphrase one students rhetorical question and response borrowing, so basically the klan was founded band geeks and furries . I wonder to what extent we address the role religion playe in shaping the meaning of emancipation or how sincere midcentury conservatives could be in their concern over the growth of the federal governments power. Third, the last point, really quickly, is what do we do with the names . Having taught in the south, the midwest, and the southwest, im not sure the term reconstruction conveys anything noble about the freedom of equality to most students, and how could it . Early in my research, my suspension is that the term reconstruction stuck precisely because we did not at the time of allah rise the struggle for africanamerican freedom. An 1860s come at least the term had to core meetings, nationa reification and socialistic change, neither explain africanamerican rights in positive terms. I think there is good reason why scholars of reconstruction often seek alternative or supplementary names, such as the second founding, or americas unfinished revolution. We are not satisfied with the terms of our past, which is why i think students find the term reconstruction confusing at best. Prof. Byrd good morning. I suppose i am next. Collegeat about a one college, a small , and i feel ite i should apologize for the weather. Idea ofo talk about the the upper nets of the past. I really like to bring up questions about reconstruction. Web things i found surprising when i first moved to maine is apparently the civil war both began in brunswick, because that is where Harry Beecher stowe wrote uncle toms kevin, and ended in brunswick because of Joshua Lawrence chamberlain. Very helpful to use that information to help them sort of transition to thinking more broadly about the period of reconstruction. I would say in my teaching ive tried my best to get students in front of original works of art, and that seems to be one of the how to help them understand different, to return to your question, our time is from the past. I know that not every institution has these sorts of archives readily available, but i would ask your questions about the institution archives, i have found great partners and librarians to work with special collections, and they are a treasure trove of information there. Do you know how many of your a lawns fought in the civil war and on which side . Do we know what the story was when they returned to campus during reconstruction . Do we know the ways in which reconstruction touched our campuses . Keep my teaching that local or i had one opportunity to teach with a colleague in history and that was the next ordinary opportunity was an ask ordinary opportunity to help me understand how much value there wasnt having our disciplines meet each other and ask questions, so i was very surprised, as example, to work with a literature historian, because we typically talk at the art of the era to talkion about the natural look, a great deal about metaphors, lots of of children as a way of rethinking the unification of the nation, and so that art, particularly painting, taking on a really more national view, but in literature, that story is quite different, right . We often think about something as local color taking on an particular importance during rey construction and im thinking of charles chestnuts work. So that is what i do, juxtaposing those sources against the historical record to help the students have a better understanding of the past, to get them to understand the choices and the questions and experiences that everyday people had. I know that you all are mostly historians, so i do not go to deeply in conversation about art, but they are are all these questions about form that really begin to emerge during reconstruction as well, and these questions during the art of reconstruction are as simple as how does one represent freedom . Representations of african paintings and sculptures and photography before the civil war were relatively rare. During the civil war, they become this great topic of visual interest, but then what does freedom look like in my work in blackness is always stood in for the enslaved. Emergequestions begin to about how to accomplish that, and we will talk about how does the africanamerican sculptor who mostly works with Something Like marble, how you create something that celebrates the joy, so these are the questions that i try to bring out, again, the sort of local approach, ensure that we cap into the bounty of archival collections, even if they are more local, and think about the different sorts of disciplines like history, art, and literature. Prof. Taylor good morning. Teach reconstruction as part , athe u. S. Survey course dedicated course on the civil war and reconstruction, and i usually start the semester, the first day of class with the survey of students, asking them essentially what they know, what they care about, and so forth. I find that that is particularly important when it comes to the civil war piece of it, because they do bring a lot into the classroom with them. But the survey ends with a question, what do you want to know most . What do you want to learn most this semester . What i have noticed is increasingly students are writing reconstruction, and i found that really interesting. At first, i thought well, i have got some diligent students. Reconstruction has fallen through the crux of the survey, and they want to fill the gaps, but then i started asking why, and i started hearing things like it seems like it was really i know it was flawed, but im not sure why, and another, i heard there were black senators how . So underlying these comments was a sense of confusion that a lot of students bring it to the class about reconstruction. They know something about it already. It has not exactly fallen through the crocs, but they have not figured out exactly how to wrap their minds around it. Through what was coming in those comments was the sense that something important happens during reconstruction. This was an important period, and i think, as i thought about it, i think it had something probably to do with where we are in the 21st century, as we hear political commentators and analysts of 21st century politics, you know, referring to reconstruction as a Reference Point for trying to process some of the things that are going on today, and then of course there is the recent reconstruction documentary, theres all the really excellent local preservation going on and the work of the National Park service and everything, so i think our current political culture and climate is telling students that they should care about this period, and that explains some of the comments that i was getting. Now, one of the advantages of teaching reconstruction relative to, say, the civil war, is that students dont at least in my experience dont tend to bring in some of those myths we need to break down or some of those entrenched narratives that are distorting the past, like we have with the civil war, but and that was probably a whole different story 20 or 30 years ago, but today, i dont encounter that. But if there is one preconception that i see students bringing into the classroom, it is the sense that the end of reconstruction and the rise of jim crow was somehow inevitable. That, in their minds, of course once slavery ended, white southerners would try to institute a second slavery, and of course they would succeed, like a state of conflict. Ofs reflects a state pessimism and our times, and also a prevailing narrative that there was a Straight Line from slavery to jim crow to the 20th century and mass incarceration, and of course, a lot of students think about the past in terms of inevitability. In themy colleagues Education School calls it the train hurtling down the past view of the past, and it is a lot easier to hop on the train, but the failure is also with the hunch that something important happen with reconstruction, too. If it was never will, should we see it as important or not that an africanamerican man named hiram was a u. S. Senator . So clearly my students come and maybe yours, have posed not just a reconstruction challenged by historical challenge, to . O . Andvel of deeper thinking, opportunities of think more selfconsciously about the pitfalls of genealogy and agency and contingency instead, so as a result, some of my most invigorating classroom discussions about the past in general and how it works have come in this period of reconstruction. I think it is a really Good Laboratory of historical thinking. I will briefly mention one way i sort of dig into all of that with the students, and i think it touches a little bit on what dana was just talking about. I confront all of this head on by trying to get students thinking about place very specifically. The way that particular places experienced reconstruction, and i have all sorts of reasons for that, but i encourage students to choose a town or county a semester long and by athens looks on one question, how reconstruction was revolutionary in that place. A revolution, he argued, but unfinished, but i think it remains a pretty potent one, it asked them to do to look at change. When they discover the federal census, for example, an increase in the rate of black Property Ownership by 1880, four when they read in the newspaper about an election of black candidates with some support from white southerners. So naturally, the students begin are these signs of progress possible, how significant were they, and they are situated on the micro level. They dig into the variables of time and place to try to e