The Remaking America curriculum should include Civil War education as it provides essential context for understanding systemic racism in the U.S. and deepens students’ understanding of the Civil Rights Movement.
Urban’s required American history classes, Making America and Remaking America, do not cover the American Civil War. This is due to limited space in the trimester system and the history department’s prioritization of deep understanding of specific topics rather than a broader selection of content.
“Nobody teaches all of U.S. history. So, the question is: what do you choose to teach and why?” history teacher Ruthann Betkey said. “We choose particular moments in U.S. history that are significant to not just learn facts, but to actually learn how to do history.”
This summer, the history department plans to make major changes to the required American history sequence, but not much information about the new curriculum is currently available because it is so early in development. “To completely blow up the sequence of the [U.S. History] class[es], we need a lot of time in the summer, and we just haven’t had that time until … now,” said Charisse Wu, Women’s U.S. History teacher and class of 2026 grade dean.
LeRoy Votto, former history teacher and current alumni ambassador, taught the two formerly required U.S. history classes: The Civil War and Recent America, in place of Making and Remaking. When Votto retired in 2016, Civil War education practically disappeared from the history department. Currently, coverage of the Civil War in the required history curriculum is limited to Henry Lewis Gates Jr.’s documentary, The African Americans.
Moving forward, Urban should have more extensive coverage of the Civil War to strengthen students’ understanding of themes already present in Remaking America. “[The Civil War] explains systemic racism,” Classic Shulman ’28 said. “If it was covered for a week in Remaking, students would have a better understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and the context necessary to really approach and evaluate all of these different solutions proposed to systemic racism.”
According to the history scholarship platform Emerging Civil War, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” address during the 1963 March on Washington, he linked the Civil Rights Movement to the unfinished work of the Civil War and emancipation. “[The Civil Rights Movement] was trying to make … the liberation of the Civil War actually mean something in the realities of the 1950s [and] ’60s,” Votto said.
To finish learning about the Civil Rights Movement unit in Remaking America, students write an essay evaluating the movement’s complexity, particularly the diverse approaches between organizations and leaders. “Without understanding that violence is what started these systemic racism issues and how deeply ingrained it is in society, it makes these more radical movements like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers seem excessive, dangerous and violent,” Shulman said.
By focusing on slavery’s central role in U.S. history the Civil War becomes a vital story of unfulfilled promises with lasting significance on the Civil Rights Movement. “You don’t have modern America without the Civil War,” history teacher Brooke Roberts said. “It’s essential to American history.”