Peniel Joseph: Jan. 6 Ended the "Third Reconstruction" that Began with Obama

The United States is just emerging from its third period of reconstruction. So writes historian Peniel Joseph.

The founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at UT-Austin’s LBJ School identifies this period as between the election of the country’s first Black president and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

Historians identify the first period of American reconstruction as immediately after the Civil War. The end of slavery meant new opportunities for Black people but those were immediately quashed with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws.

The second period of reconstruction began with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling abolishing school segregation and ending with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – another period of gains for people of color and then backlash.

Joseph spoke to the Texas Standard about his new book: “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century.” He says it’s important to look at the very recent past in the context of greater American history because it offers hard lessons as well as hope. Listen to the interview in the audio player above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity.

Texas Standard: Are there risks in identifying an historic era so shortly after it happened?

Peniel Joseph: Well, you know, I think there are always risks, especially when you’re doing contemporary history. But I think that the similarities are just so striking when we think about some of the unhappy patterns that we see through all three periods of reconstruction. And certainly what we all witnessed in 2020 really allows us to get a deeper understanding of the contemporary by checking to see patterns in previous historical time periods. So I don’t think history repeats itself, but it certainly rhymes. And when we think about this period of reconstruction, there are real similarities with the earlier two periods.

The first two words in your book are “George Floyd” – but it wasn’t his murder at the hands of police that marked the beginning or end of this Third Reconstruction for you. How does that moment and its aftermath fit in?

Certainly, 2020 is a year filled with these startling juxtapositions. So on the one hand, the year begins with this health pandemic, and we all see that there are racially disparate effects of the pandemic. Then we see the murder of George Floyd, and 25 million people come out in the streets in the largest racial justice and social justice demonstrations and movement in American history. Black Lives Matter becomes a global phenomenon. And then we see a very, very racially divisive presidential election. But we get the largest voter outcome in American history. Over 155 million people vote. And then we see a contested election to the extent that a sitting American president says he did not lose and he’s sort of refusing to concede defeat. And, of course, January 6 and the insurrection at the nation’s capitol. So we think about those periods, both the progress that we see — people finally having a racial and political reckoning and the negative — that really encapsulates these periods of reconstruction where, it’s really less of one step forward and two steps back but more of this battle between reconstructionist supporters of multiracial democracy and redemptionist advocates of white supremacy. And it’s both a political battle. It’s a policy battle. It’s a legislative and legal war, but it’s also a physical battle.