The Reconstruction Era, a period in American history at the end of and immediately following the Civil War, is one of the single-most important and instructive periods in American history. It has also, historically, been one of the least-taught. Why is that, and what are we missing?

In this, the first in a three-part series on Reconstruction, we speak to Mimi Eisen of the Zinn Education Project about America’s first Civil Rights Era and why most of us don’t know enough about it.