Reconstruction

150 Years Ago, the Colfax Massacre Was the Largest Single Attack on Black People's Democratic Rights

by Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall and Keri Leigh Merritt

The horrific explosion of violence in April 1973, as white southerners refused to accept the results of the 1872 election, was the climax of years of federal abandonment of a commitment to protect the rights and lives of Black people, who were left to fight for democracy on their own. 

The Long, Sordid History of Expelling Black Lawmakers

by David A. Love

Throughout the reconstruction era (and after) Black lawmakers faced challenges to their legitimacy by proponents of antidemocratic rule by a white elite. 

Zora Neal Hurston's Town is one of Many Imperiled Historic Sites

by Nick Tabor

Eatonville has temporarily prevented a large development that many residents feared would lead to gentrification and the erasure of Black history in the Florida town, but it is just one example of the difficulty facing efforts to preserve sites of African American history. 

The Real Story Behind the Expulsion of the Two Black Members of the "Tennessee Three"

by Jemar Tisby

The disproportionate response of the Tennessee House's majority—the expulsion of two Black members for the violation of decorum rules during a gun control protest—echoes the efforts of the so-called "Redeemers" of the Reconstruction era to reassert white supremacy through expulsions. 

New Books Force Consideration of Reconstruction's End from Black Perspective

Books by Kidada Williams and Mari Crabtree shift attention away from the motives and mentality of white racist terrorists toward the impact on African American cultural, political, and psychological life in the wake of attacks by the Klan and other vigilantes. 

Kara Walker Disrupts the Visual History of the Civil War in New Exhibition

by Allison Robinson and Ksenia M. Soboleva

The artist Kara Walker's 2005 series of prints merged the historical illustrations that shaped Americans' understanding of the Civil War in its immediate aftermath and in the 1890s with her original subversive take on the tradition of silhouette art to highlight the erasure of Black experiences of war. Two curators are putting Walker's work in context in a new exhibition.

Kidada Williams on The Reconstruction that Wasn't

In the new "I Saw Death Coming," Williams describes a "shadow Confederacy" that refused to cede freedom or dignity to African Americans who often lived far from the reach of a federal government that was unreliably committed to their protection. 

Albion Tourgée's Forgotten Proposal for Power to the People

by Brook Thomas

The Black Republican activist hoped to draft a Reconstruction constitution for North Carolina that vested power in the people, which might have prevented the potential mischief that could be unleashed by Supreme Court cases that threaten to empower state legislatures to thwart democracy. 

Why the States of the Confederacy are the Foundation of American Gun Culture

by Nick Buttrick

White Southerners' efforts to reclaim power after Reconstruction help explain how Americans think about guns: what they're used for, and whom they're used against. 

Can a History of America's First Two Reconstructions Make a Third one Possible?

Peniel Joseph's book looks to the past struggles to define and achieve freedom and equality to ask what America's Third Reconstruction – begun with Obama's election and attacked since– must do to survive and advance. 

Kidada Williams Joins Chris Hayes to Talk Reconstruction and Political Violence

"Ex-Confederates didn't let go of slavery lightly. They did what they could to hold on to it. And so, African-Americans largely had to fight their way out of bondage."

Eric Foner: Originalism and the Color-Blind Constitution are Intellectually Indefensible

The historian says that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was on the right track to argue that the meaning of the 14th Amendment must be understood in context of its authors' intention to end the race-based subjugation of Black people. 

The Freedman's Bank Forum Obscures the Institution's Real History

by Justene Hill Edwards

Vice President Kamala Harris's recent remarks at the forum enlisted the Freedman's Bank to celebrate public-private partnerships between banks and minority communities. The real history of the Freedman's Bank shows why public-private partnerships and moral uplift are inadequate to promote financial equity. 

The Democrats Haven't Learned the Lessons of the Nation's First Voting Rights Act

by Ed Burmila

Beginning with the failure of the Lodge Act in 1890, parties have treated voting rights as just one of many policy priorities competing for space on the agenda and scarce political capital, instead of a basic precondition of functioning democracy. Democrats today are repeating this mistake. 

Will the 2022 Midterms Echo 1866?

by Manisha Sinha

A rogue president inciting violence, economic uncertainty, and political factionism threatening to erupt into violence: In 1866, the severity of southern reaction pushed other voters out of complacency to keep reconstruction on track. Will outrage over January 6 and abortion restrictions similarly safeguard the halting turn away from Trump? 

Thulani Davis Reconsiders the Geography of Freedom During Reconstruction

Emancipation wasn't just an idea, it was a literal place, described in a new book as the route around the periphery of the South traced by Black Americans in pursuit of work, business, and family reunification. 

The Promise and Peril of the "Third Reconstruction"

by Peniel E. Joseph

At a time when the nation is balanced precariously between advocates for multiracial democracy and white nationalists, it is important to understand the history and the incompleteness of the expansion of freedom and democracy during Reconstruction. 

Newspaper Ads Freedmen Filed for Family Reunification Aid African American Genealogy Today

Historian Blair Kelley and NYT writer Rachel Swarns discuss the archival ads placed by the newly emancipated to locate family members, and how those fill in the gaps for descendants seeking to assemble family histories. 

A Substantive Due Process Explainer: What Was the Basic Weakness of Roe?

The application of the 14th Amendment to extend broad guarantees of individual rights is recent; the history of the doctrine of substantive due process has more frequently been used to protect the interests of corporations and the powerful. It's time for a new legal approach.

Anti-Trespassing Laws a Vestige of Racist "Black Codes" of Postbellum South

by Brian Sawers

Trespassing laws were ostensibly "color blind," but worked in practice to restrict the mobility of Freedmen and women in the South and to empower white landowners to control Black social life.