Revamped Civil and Human Rights Center expands our understanding of Reconstruction
A “splendid failure” is the phrase historian W.E.B. DuBois used in 1935 to describe the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. Almost a century later, fellow historians consider the 12 years spanning 1865-1877 to be the most misunderstood period of American history.
When Atlanta’s National Center for Civil and Human Rights reopens after a 10-month, $57 million expansion, a new exhibition will tell the story of our attempt to create a true democracy and the pattern of progress and backlash that has existed ever since.
“Broken Promises: The Legacy of Reconstruction” opens in December, several weeks after the center’s Nov. 8 grand reopening, and it is an important piece of the larger story being told at the center, said Kama Pierce, chief program officer.
“I think anyone who really understands history knows that we didn’t just get to the 1950s. Jim Crow didn’t just come out of nowhere,” Pierce said.
History, as they say, really does repeat itself. And you can’t truly understand the foundations of this country without understanding Reconstruction.
That period of time wasn’t widely examined or studied by historians until the 1960s. Teachings on Reconstruction at cultural institutions and in school curricula haven’t always kept pace with the latest scholarship.
Pierce worked closely with human rights strategist Ejim Dike, historian Kidada Williams of Wayne State University in Detroit, and Nicole Moore, the center’s senior director of education, to curate the exhibition.
“This is so pivotal to our American history,” Pierce said. “These 12 years of Reconstruction were a time of hope. Racism still existed, but we had this hope that finally we would be part of this nation, finally we would be a full person and be protected, and it was taken away with the Compromise of 1877.”
Many Americans have a limited understanding of the time period when formerly enslaved people made political, social and economic progress. Those gains were almost immediately met with backlash from white supremacists in the form of violence, denial of civil rights and human rights, and the erasure or rewriting of history.
“For decades, people were taught this racist version of Reconstruction, which blamed the so-called faults of the Reconstruction government on Black people and the power they had acquired in the South during this period,” said Adam Sanchez, a spokesperson for Zinn Education Project, in our 2022 interview.
That year, the educational nonprofit issued a report on the 45 out of 50 states that had no standards or minimal standards for teaching Reconstruction in grades K-12.
Georgia’s role in Reconstruction has also been largely misunderstood, including the moment in January 1865, weeks after Sherman’s March to the Sea, when 20 Black men — all but three who lived in or were born in Georgia — met with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to answer 12 questions about the sentiments and desires of formerly enslaved people.
The result of that conversation, Gen. William T. Sherman’s Field Order 15, redistributed 400,000 acres of land in 40-acre parcels to free Black people and southern white people who had been loyal to the United States.
A few months later, after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the order was nullified by Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Jackson, and the path to Black equality and advancement was irrevocably disrupted.
“Broken Promises” begins in the 2020s and takes visitors back to the 1800s using immersive Alice in Wonderland-style newspapers and books to tell the story of Black communities in Atlanta; Wilmington, North Carolina; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The voices of Black journalists such as Ida B. Wells, Alexander Manly and Mary Jones Parrish narrate the violence that tore through these once thriving communities.
The exhibition invites visitors to consider how headlines can shape our perspective and how the pattern of the 1860s — a period of promise followed by a period of collapse — has continued well into the 2020s.
Tackling Reconstruction is part of a larger mission at the expanded center, which also features more classrooms and event space, a redesigned King Center with access to the King Papers, additional seats at the Lunch Counter Sit-in simulation, and a children’s gallery with activities and tasks that will appeal to younger visitors when it opens in spring 2026.
During a recent media tour, President and CEO Jill Savitt pointed out each of these new additions, noting that they have taken a hope-based approach to communications with a vision for the center to become a national cultural institution.
Pierce said she believes “Broken Promises” will invite visitors to embrace all parts of our nation’s history.
“I hope that people entertain the idea that there might be some patterns in our country that exist and that we have power to stop those patterns,” she said.
Acknowledging, understanding, and examining the good and the ugly parts of our splendid failure is key to helping us move forward.
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About the Author
Nedra Rhone is a lifestyle columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution where she has been a reporter since 2006. A graduate of Columbia University School of Journalism, she enjoys writing about the people, places and events that define metro Atlanta.
