Reconstruction

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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. 

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• SOURCE: Arkansas Democrat & Gazette
  4/11/2021
  

  Unsung and Unknown — Graphic Biography Details Life of First Black Lieutenant Governor, Oscar Dunn

  Professor Brian Mitchell's path into history began with a teacher's disbelief that one of his relatives had been the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. He now tells the story of Oscar Dunn in a graphic form to make it as widely accessible as possible. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/29/2021
  

  The Lack of Federal Voting Rights Protections Returns Us to the Pre-Civil War Era

  by Kate Masur

  New vote suppression bills in multiple states threaten to return the United States not to the Jim Crow era but to the period before the Civil War and Reconstruction when civil and political rights were protected or denied according to state politics. 

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• SOURCE: National Geographic
  3/22/2021
  

  This U.S. Governor was Impeached—For Cracking Down on the KKK

  Governor William Woods Holden responded to a brazen campaign of KKK terrorism with a declaration of martial law in two North Carolina counties. The backlash led to his impeachment. 

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• SOURCE: Art & Object
  3/15/2021
  

  Understanding a Political Cartoon: Nast & Reconstruction

  Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott and Dr. Beth Harris take a close read of Thomas Nast's 1874 political cartoon, "The Union As It Was—Worse Than Slavery." (H/T to the Twitter feed of Kevin M. Levin!)

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• SOURCE: CNN
  3/3/2021
  

  The Capitol Riot is an Eerie Repeat of this Tense Era in American History

  Historian Brian K. Mitchell tells the story of Oscar James Dunn's service as the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction; Kate Masur also comments on Reconstruction era politics. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/26/2021
  

  America’s Political Roots Are in Eutaw, Alabama

  "The terror campaign of 1870 ended the promise of Alabama’s brief Reconstruction era, allowing the so-called Redeemers to pry Alabama from the hands of reform. This was the critical juncture that led to the way things are."

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• SOURCE: Muster
  2/23/2021
  

  The Necessity of National Unity: Defeated Confederates’ International Appeals to Unity

  by Ann Tucker

  Defeated Confederate partisans found justification and support for national reunification without accountability by pointing selectively to the contentious politics of the European nationalist movement. 

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• SOURCE: Albany Times-Union
  2/20/2021
  

  Time to Stop the Whitewash

  by Joseph R. Fitzgerald

  If having a national, unifying narrative of history is necessary to hold civil society together, it can't be a story that erases inequality, conflict and struggle. 

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• 2/21/2021
  

  Don't Defend Democracy With Half-Truths About the Past

  by Brook Thomas

  Although the Capitol riots raised deep concern about the rule of law, there is a deeper challenge ahead of the nation: to understand and change the undemocratic aspects of our foundational law and refuse half-measures in the name of unity.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/18/2021
  

  The 150-Year-Old Ku Klux Klan Act Being Used Against Trump In Capitol Attack

  Ulysses S. Grant championed legislation to apply the power of the federal government against armed conspiracies to prevent the exercise of the vote. A Mississippi Congressman is now suing Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani under a provision of the law that allows victims to file civil lawsuits against conspirators.

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  2/4/2021
  

  How to Teach History in a Community Still Reckoning With Its Past

  "For the African American community, it was still this large, looming scar, and the white community literally didn’t even know what had happened. It had just been erased. There was this disconnect in the community."

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  2/3/2021
  

  The Case for a Third Reconstruction

  by Manisha Sinha

  During their brief hold on power, so-called "Radical Republicans" used their power to build multiracial democracy in the South and punish white supremacist terrorism. We face the same challenges today and must learn from and complete the work begun in Reconstruction and renewed by the modern Civil Rights movement.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/30/2021
  

  Only Accountability Will Allow the U.S. to Move Forward

  by Mitch Landrieu

  Full accountability for the Capitol Riot is essential lest white supremacists and other extremists take the lesson that their actions are accepted and permitted. The white supremacist massacres of the post-Reconstruction period show that moving on without accountability is impossible.