I graduated from high school in 1960. I did not know that the Union Army had Black troops. I was taught that Reconstruction was a disaster for the south. I remember the words “scalawags” (Southerners who helped the North) and “carpetbaggers” (Northerners who came south to use Blacks to run Southern affairs). The “Radical Republicans” like Thaddeus Stevens from Pennsylvania were presented not as people interested in equality, but as fanatics bent on unfairly punishing the South. Robert E. Lee was a wonderful man. Lynching was never mentioned.
Luckily I had a mother who taught me that Americans were equal no matter what their race. Luckily I was instinctively on the right side of the Civil Rights movement. Luckily I read James Baldwin in high school.
I sure didn’t learn that in grade school or high school. And that is why we need Black History month. And why we need to teach the history of all Americans, no matter what the so-called “Mothers for Liberty” or Ron DeSantis might say.
I remember reading the "How and Why Wonderbook of the Civil War" in 3rd grade. The history I learned in grade school also favored the South. It was only when I learned that Union general David Hunter was born on the same day of the year as me that I became a Civil War buff and learn the truth about the war and reconstruction.
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