Reconstruction

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• SOURCE: WMAR
  4/28/2022
  

  NMAAHC and Local Historians Team Up to Preserve Tale of Maryland Freedmen's School

  "A month before the Civil War formally ended, a 20-year-old Black woman and prolific writer named Edmonia Highgate came from upstate New York to Harford County to launch a school for former slaves."

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  4/30/2022
  

  W.E.B. DuBois's Abolition Democracy

  by Gerald Horne

  DuBois understood the impossibility of separating a historical analysis of Reconstruction from the political context of Jim Crow racial totalitarianism and exploitative capitalism. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/31/2022
  

  Lies We Teach to Kids about the Reconstruction Era

  by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

  "The narrative of Reconstruction perpetuated by many state social studies standards is part of a longer and larger struggle over the past, the latest episode of which can be seen in a rash of new restrictions on what teachers can tell young people about our nation’s history.

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• SOURCE: Wash
  3/13/2022
  

  Painful, Cutting, and Brilliant: The Meaning of Freedom in Letters to Former Enslavers

  by Gillian Brockell

  Wages and economic security, citizenship rights and family unification were core concerns addressed in letters from free Black people to their former enslavers. 

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• SOURCE: The 74
  2/15/2022
  

  No Era More Critical, More Neglected in History Education than Reconstruction, Report Finds

  by Mimi Eisen

  Most state history standards are inadequate at best in the attention they give to Reconstruction, and need to be reworked to help students understand the making of modern America and the unresolved questions of racism and democracy that plague us today. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  2/7/2022
  

  The Legacy of the Black Elected Officials of Reconstruction

  by Olivia B. Waxman and Arpita Aneja

  The Supreme Court's decision to reject a challenge to Alabama's political districting map calls to mind the often violent politics that overthrew Reconstruction; the brief period when Black southerners elected their fellows to represent them stands as an example of what multiracial democracy means in practice.

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/3/2022
  

  For Trump and Trumpists, the Law is Always White

  by Melissa Gira Grant

  In singling out the Black elected officials who thwarted his bid to steal the election and are investigating his political and business affairs, Trump evoked the Reconstruction-era rhetoric of white southerns under attack, which, as Eric Foner wrote, justified a massive wave of racist political violence. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/23/2022
  

  Erasing Black Leadership from Reconstruction History Still Distorts Our Understanding

  by Robert Greene II and Tyler D. Parry

  The actions of southern Black leaders during Reconstruction shed light not just on their efforts to secure political power but the kind of multiracial democracy and society they hoped to achieve.

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• SOURCE: AL.com
  1/12/2022
  

  Alabama's Capitol is a Crime Scene, with a 120 Year Coverup

  The Alabama Capitol in Montgomery was the first seat of the Confederate government and the place where white Democrats ratified a Jim Crow constitution in 1901. You'd learn little of this by touring the museum-like building. 

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• SOURCE: Zinn Education Project/Teach Reconstruction
  1/12/2022
  

  State Standards are Failing to Teach Reconstruction and Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle

  by Ana Rosado, Gideon Cohn-Postar and Mimi Eisen

  A common thread connecting public ignorance of American history and the politicization of history curricula is the systemic erasure of the history of Reconstruction. This report considers how states currently mandate the teaching of the era and what they could do better. 

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• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  12/14/2021
  

  The Right's 1877 Project

  Helen Andrews's recent "American Conservative" column revives the myths that Reconstruction was a "tragic era" and that Black disenfranchisement was a force for progress, troubling indicators of the current right's views of democracy. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/5/2021
  

  Ghosts of Mississippi

  by Charles M. Blow

  The Times columnist argues that the oral arguments in the SCOTUS abortion case recall the bitter history of disenfranchisement in Mississippi, and the subsequent decades when rights were stripped away from Mississippians without democratic process.

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• SOURCE: KUT
  10/28/2021
  

  Structural Racism Hinders Efforts to Preserve History of Texas "Freedom Colonies"

  Dr. Andrea Roberts of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project says that the history of Black settlements during Reconstruction and Jim Crow is hindered by rules about what sites qualify as "historic."  

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/4/2021
  

  Searching for Descendants of Racist Terrorism

  Wilmington, North Carolina resident Tim Pinnick has partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative and numerous volunteers to try to locate every living descendant of the victims of the white supremacist coup that overthrew the city's biracial government in 1898. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  8/1/2021
  

  Are the Democrats About to Repeat Mistakes that Led to Jim Crow?

  If Democrats won't go all out to protect the franchise for their most loyal constituencies, how can they expect to govern? The history of the Jim Crow south suggests they won't, according to historian Richard White. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/13/2021
  

  Bouie: America Punishes Only a Certain Kind of Rebel

  by Jamelle Bouie

  Impunity for the leaders of the Confederacy enabled the bloody overthrow of Reconstruction and the reestablishment of white supremacy. The mistake must not be repeated for the January 6 riots. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  6/1/2021
  

  The Reconstruction Origins of "Black Wall Street"

  by Alexandra E. Stern

  Understanding Tulsa's Black Wall Street as a product of the rise and fall of Reconstruction helps to think more productively about how the Tulsa massacre speaks to the policy problems of racial justice. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  5/17/2021
  

  Our 250-Year Fight for Multiracial Democracy

  The 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention offers a lens onto the profoundly anti-democratic views held by many of the founding generation. We deal with the same hostility toward majority rule today. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/9/2021
  

  A Texas Bill Drew Ire for Saying it Would Preserve ‘Purity of the Ballot Box.’ Here’s the Phrase’s History

  Texas legislation invoked the "purity of the ballot box," a phrase critics argued harkened back to the era of Jim Crow and the White Primary. Historians say the phrase itself is obscure but the idea that white Texans are the preferred voting citizens has a long history in the state. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  5/8/2021
  

  A Short History of the Long Conservative Assault on Black Voting Power

  Eric Foner and Kevin Kruse discuss the historical precedent for the resurgent ideological position that some votes should be more equal than others.