Teaching Ourselves - Church as School | Reconstruction 360

Freedpeople often had difficulty finding appropriate school buildings, and Black students regularly attended school in churches. Ministers were often happy to host schools in their churches, and congregation members in turn raised funds and often donated land to establish freestanding school buildings.

Reconstruction 360 uses a 360 degree video platform as a storytelling device that lets the audience step inside pivotal Reconstruction events. By clicking on icons within the 360 video the user can access short documentaries that offer the perspectives of multiple characters, historians and descendants. Reconstruction 360 also includes lesson plans, curriculum standards and primary documents. In this module, Teaching Ourselves, welcome to a small school in rural Alabama. Everyone in the community is excited about the new teacher, a recent Normal School graduate who brings spelling books for her students.