What everyone should know about Reconstruction 150 years after the 15th Amendment's ratification

I’ll never forget a student’s response when I asked during a middle school social studies class what they knew about black history: “Martin Luther King freed the slaves.”Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929, more than six decades after the time of enslavement. To me, this comment underscored how closely Americans associate black history with slavery.While shocked, I knew this mistaken belief reflected the lack of time, depth and breadth schools devote to black history.