Elementary and Middle | High School | Adult | Teachers
Below are recommended books for students and teachers on the Reconstruction era in the United States.
The Zinn Education Project Teach Reconstruction Campaign offers lessons for middle and high school, a student campaign to make Reconstruction history visible in their communities, and an annotated list of recommended teaching guides, student-friendly books, primary document collections, and films.
Titles with reviews on this site are noted with an asterisk (*).
See more recommended titles on these lists: Civil Rights Teaching, Black History, Slavery, Resistance, and Reparations
All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom
By Angela Johnson, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)
Do You Know Them? Families Lost and Found After the Civil War
By Shana Keller and Laura Freeman (Illustrator)
Seeking Freedom: The Untold Story of Fortress Monroe and the Ending of Slavery in America
By Selene Castrovilla and E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)
Freedom Was in Sight: A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, D.C., Region
By Kate Masur and Elizabeth Clarke (Illustrator)
Make Good the Promises: Reclaiming Reconstruction and Its Legacies
Edited by Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Paul Gardullo
Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana
By Brian K. Mitchell, Barrington S. Edwards, and Nick Weldon
The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century
Edited by P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Patterson
Learn more at the Colored Conventions Project
Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901
By Heather Cox Richardson
The Dunning School: Historians, Race, and the Meaning of Reconstruction
Edited by J. Vincent Lowery and John David Smith, Foreword by Eric Foner
Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers
By David Zoby and David Wright
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Series 1, Volume 2 - The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South
Edited by Joseph P. Reidy, Ira Berlin, and Steven F. Miller
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Series 3, Volume 1 - Land and Labor, 1865
Edited by Steven Hahn, Steven F. Miller, and Susan E. O'Donovan
Freedoms Gained and Lost: Reconstruction and Its Meanings 150 Years Later
Edited by Adam H. Domby and Simon Lewis
Help Me To Find My People: The African American Search For Family Lost In Slavery
By Heather Andrea Williams
Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina
Edited by Robert Greene and Tyler D. Parry
Website: Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876
By Equal Justice Initiative
Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy
By James Allen, Foreword by Eric Foner
Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War
By Nicholas Lemann
Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment
By Willie Lee Rose
Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles Over the Meaning of America's Most Turbulent Era
Edited by Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker, Introuction by W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition
By Katherine Franke
Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America
By Megan Kate Nelson
T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro-American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880-1928
Edited by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change During Reconstruction
By Michael W. Fitzgerald
The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era
By Douglas R. Egerton
