North Carolina historians seek to help educators accurately teach about the Civil War

The NC History Center on the Civil War, Emancipation & Reconstruction is hosting a two-day symposium for educators in Greensboro this week.

The goal is to equip teachers with the resources they need to accurately educate their students about this time period. 

The seminars will feature discussions led by professors from the region about what the Civil War and Reconstruction eras were like in the Piedmont, and strategies for teaching about them to middle and high school students. 

Michael McElreath, who is leading the effort with the NC History Center, says he likes to interview educators before they attend the symposium to get a feel for how they would typically teach this part of history. 

“The first question I usually pose is, how do you help students make sense of something that was really unusual? Which was the 1860s, Americans slaughtered each other in huge numbers," McElreath said. "You know, that's something that we don't typically do. How do you help them make sense of why a conflict would get to that level?”

He says the majority of the educators he talks to accurately attribute the cause of the war to the issue of slavery. But some downplayed the role of slavery, instead citing remnants of an interpretation called “Lost Cause” which experts widely agree is incorrect. 

“All of this ideology was around sort of forgiving the white South for its behaviors in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and laying the blame for what happened elsewhere," McElreath said. "And that ideology has been thoroughly debunked and is no longer part of the way that the academy teaches about this era, at least since the 1950s and early 60s, but it still holds on in some secondary classrooms.”

McElreath says the history center is trying to change that, by encouraging teachers to be honest about slavery being the cause of the Civil War and providing them with primary sources and access to experts in the field. 

The latest symposium will be held in Greensboro on Wednesday and Thursday with 20 teachers from the area participating. The center has been offering seminars like this one across the state since 2018.

Amy Diaz covers education for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.