Reconstruction

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  1/15/2021
  

  Reconstruction Era Expert On Why Politicians Use Terms Unity And Healing

  "Reconciliation needs accountability. You can't just wash your hands and say, let's forget about the past and move forward with healing."

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  1/14/2021
  

  Reconstruction Offers No Easy Answers for How to Handle the Trump Insurgency

  by Rebecca Onion

  It's tricky to draw any definitive lessons about how to deal with the Capitol insurgents from Reconstruction, particularly since many facile "lessons from history" make counterfactual assumptions. Historian Cynthia Nicoletti discusses the complex imperatives of justice, punishment, reconciliation, and national reunification that contributed to the course of Reconstruction.

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/10/2021
  

  The Attempted Insurrection was Only Part of the Right’s Anti-Democratic Playbook

  by Melissa DeVelvis and DJ Polite

  The overthrow of Reconstruction in South Carolina involved a symbiotic relationship between white political leaders and a loose coalition of armed white vigilante groups. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/12/2021
  

  Impeachment May Not Work. Here’s the Next Best Way to Dump Trump

  by Eric Foner

  The 14th Amendment empowers Congress to bar persons involved in insurrection against the United States from holding office. This can't remove Trump, but it can stop him (and anyone found to have plotted the Capitol rioting) from returning to office. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  1/13/2021
  

  Learning from the Failure of Reconstruction

  Isaac Chotiner interviews Eric Foner on the echoes of Reconstruction-era political violence in last week's Capitol riots. 

• 
• SOURCE: Reckon South
  1/12/2021
  

  Was the attack on Congress un-American? Yes and no, historians say

  Historians John Giggie and Manisha Sinha weigh in on how the Capitol riots do and don't reflect patterns of violence in American history. 

• 
• 1/10/2021
  

  Historical Rhetoric Resurfaced in Georgia's Runoff Election

  by Alicia K. Jackson

  Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock didn't just defeat their Republican opponents on January 5, they defeated a number of racist tropes that have characterized Georgia politics since Reconstruction. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/8/2020
  

  The Capitol Riot Reveals the Dangers From the Enemy Within

  by Eric Foner

  Let’s not assume that until the Capitol riot the United States was a well-functioning democracy.

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/8/2020
  

  1871 Provides a Road Map for Addressing the Pro-Trump Attempted Insurrection

  by Megan Kate Nelson

  "The actions that the federal government took in 1871 signaled its willingness to defend the constitutional rights of the nation’s citizens, Black and White, and to protect them against violence."

• 
• SOURCE: Democracy Now!
  1/7/2020
  

  Historian: White Terrorist Groups Attacked Democracy During Reconstruction, They Are Doing It Again

  Historian Manisha Sinha discusses the antecedents of Wednesday's mob invasion of the U.S. Capitol, incited by Donald Trump during the certification of the electoral college victory of Joe Biden.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  1/5/2020
  

  Josh Hawley Dodges Question During Fox News Grilling on Election Challenge

  Senator Josh Hawley's demands that Congress intervene in the electoral vote certification depends on ignoring that A: Congress formed such a commission in 1877 after three states failed to certify their vote and B: the resulting compromise forfeited the politial and civil rights of Black Americans. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/24/2020
  

  The Ugliest Presidential Election in History: Fraud, Voter Intimidation and a Backroom Deal

  Any comparison between the disputed election of 1876 and today must put the role of racist terrorism against black voters by figures like South Carolina's "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman at the center of analysis, contents Ronald G. Shafer. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  11/9/2020
  

  An American Pogrom (Review)

  by David W. Blight

  David W. Blight reviews a new book on the 1898 Wilmington massacre and the violent overthrow of multiracial democracy in North Carolina. 

• 
• SOURCE: CBS News
  10/25/2020
  

  Voter Fraud, Suppression and Partisanship: A Look at the 1876 Election

  As the United States celebrated the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, a heated competition between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden was rife with accusations of voter fraud and suppression.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/24/2020
  

  How to Steal an Election

  by Jon Grinspan

  Many of our election rules date from that moment, around 1900, when Americans redirected their “love of smart dealings” toward tightening up electoral systems, rather than finding ways around them.  

• 
• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  10/19/2020
  

  “If Anybody Says Election to Me, I Want to Fight”: The Messy Election of 1876

  by Jon Grinspan

  The election of 1876 was a disaster for American democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  10/6/2020
  

  The Oligarchs’ Revenge (Review)

  by Manisha Sinha

  Heather Cox Richardson's book makes an essential argument that the conceptual distinction between class and race in American history obscures the way that American elites have worked to create and defend oligarchy. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/24/2020
  

  The Origins of Policing in America

  Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Media Studies scholar Chenjerai Kumanyika explain how American policing grew out of efforts to control the labor of poor and enslaved people.

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/11/2020
  

  The Election from Our Past that Blares a Warning for 2020

  by Richard Kreitner

  The election of 1876 threatened to return the country to civil war. The compromise that prevented that outcome may have been worse. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/6/2020
  

  Our Long, Forgotten History of Election-Related Violence

  by Jelani Cobb

  A weather forecast is not a prediction of the inevitable. We are not doomed to witness a catastrophic tempest this fall, but anyone who is paying attention knows that the winds have begun to pick up.