In recent political debates over how to teach U.S. history, the subject of slavery has loomed large. Long-documented omissions and misrepresentations in lessons have left students with incomplete ...

Squeezed between the devastation of the U.S. Civil War and the excesses of the Gilded Age, the pivotal era of Reconstruction doesn't always get the attention it deserves in grade-school history ...

I’ll never forget a student’s response when I asked during a middle school social studies class what they knew about black history: “Martin Luther King freed the slaves.” Martin Luther King Jr. was ...

A dozen years after first being rebuffed in South Carolina, the National Park Service is poised to make another run at designating trails, historic sites, and perhaps a park or two in commemoration of ...

President Barack Obama is one of the prominent voices featured in a new podcast, "Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise," ...

In the past few years, the period in American history known as Reconstruction has become increasingly prominent in the public consciousness. The dominant academic narrative is now mainstream: ...

The first body of lawmakers to meet at the state house in Columbia, South Carolina, had a Black majority. From 1868 to 1874, South Carolina had a majority Black legislature, the only state to do so to ...