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Upcoming
Theme Study to Focus the Era of Reconstruction
|
 Washington,
DC – May 2015 / Newsmaker Alert / The National
Park Service has commissioned the first
comprehensive review of nationally significant historical sites of
the Reconstruction Era. The project, a National Historic Landmark Theme
Study on the U.S. Reconstruction Era, 1861-1898, will bring attention to
the history of the period of emancipation and Reconstruction after the
Civil War and identify landmarks that help tell the nation’s story.
National
Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said, “The Reconstruction Era
is a crucial piece of the nation’s history, with deep ties to the Civil
War that reach into the Civil Rights Era and beyond. This theme study will
identify nationally significant sites and buildings related to the Era
of Reconstruction and help educate all Americans about this often-ignored
or misunderstood period in our rich history.”
Reconstruction
is one of the most complex, poorly understood, and significant eras in
United States history. In this pivotal period, four million African Americans,
newly freed from bondage, sought to establish schools and communities,
while white southerners faced the challenges of both wartime defeat and
slavery’s abolition.
Confronting
the question of how the states of the former Confederacy would rejoin the
United States of America, Congress entered a period of extraordinarily
creative and meaningful policymaking, passing the nation’s first federal
civil rights laws and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution.
Such
developments were immensely controversial, particularly among white southerners
disappointed by the Confederacy’s defeat and unwilling to accept the new
order. By the end of the nineteenth century, southern states had implemented
Jim Crow regimes and disfranchised most African American voters. Congress
did little to intervene, and the U.S. Supreme Court followed suit, declaring
in 1896 that racial segregation was legal nationwide. The Reconstruction
Era is a crucial piece of the nation’s history, with deep ties to two other
areas of National Park Service focus: the Civil War and the Civil Rights
Era.
The
National Historic Landmark Theme Study on Reconstruction is part of a process
designed to enhance public understanding of this complex and contested
period. Theme
studies are an effective way of identifying and nominating properties
for preservation because they provide a national historic context and therefore
allow for the comparative analysis of properties associated with a specific
area of American history.
Historians’
understandings of Reconstruction changed dramatically over the course of
the 20th century, but current scholarship on the period has been slow to
enter public consciousness. Discredited legends of “carpetbaggers,” “scalawags,”
and other corrupt individuals and practices often stand in place of historical
fact. By emphasizing the themes of black institution building, violence
and civil unrest, enfranchisement and the expansion of democracy, land
and labor reform, the expansion of federal power, and the remaking of the
South, the Reconstruction theme study will provide a framework for an invigorated
public understanding of the period.
About
the National Park Service
More
than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 407 national
parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local
history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit us at
www.nps.gov,
on Facebook www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice,
Twitter www.twitter.com/natlparkservice,
and YouTube www.youtube.com/nationalparkservice.
NPS
Contact:
Jeffery
Olson
202-208-6843 |
