photo by: Contributed

A Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area partner site meeting held at the Watkins Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts St.

Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area has joined a national historic network that will help highlight and spread the stories of the Reconstruction Era, a period following the American Civil War.

The National Park Service in 2019 created the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network to connect sites across the country that provide education, interpretation and research related to the period after the Civil War. The Reconstruction Era, lasting from 1861 to 1900, was a pivotal time when the United States integrated millions of newly freed African Americans into social, political and labor systems and outlawed voter discrimination based on race, color or prior enslavement.

“Everyone’s heard about the Civil War, everyone’s heard about school desegregation … but a lot of times people don’t really understand what it took to make that transition from enslavement to freedom and how the Black community especially responded,” Kate Sutter, director of programming for Freedom’s Frontier, told the Journal-World.

The network will help Freedom’s Frontier and other organizations tell those stories by fostering research and collaboration on Reconstruction Era-topics. It’s managed by the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park and encompasses more than 100 sites and programs nationwide, and it’s a part of the federal government’s ongoing investments to recognize and preserve Black history.

According to the National Park Service, despite its significance, Reconstruction remains a largely overlooked period in American history. The Reconstruction period reshaped citizenship and the balance of power between federal and state governments, and the failure of Reconstruction’s promises — and the significant challenges that African Americans faced in exercising their rights — eventually sparked the 20th-century civil rights movement.

Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area, which operates in 41 counties in Kansas and Missouri, includes several historical sites that have stories related to the Reconstruction Era, and the connection to this network will help ensure that they are shared.

“Right now, we’re thinking about and identifying those partners who have those stories, because our mission as an organization is to get visitors to them and to increase tourism,” Sutter said.

Sutter said that “by being part of this national network, more people will become interested and familiar with those sites and they can then find us and our region much more easily.”