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A Freedmen’s Bureau office, Richmond, Virginia, 1866.

One Brief Shining Moment

Manisha Sinha’s history of Reconstruction sheds fresh light on the period that fleetingly opened a door to a different America.
by Adam Hochschild via New York Review of Books on May 11, 2025
Collage of Abram Colby and his newspaper.

They Tried to Bury Him: The Hidden History of Abram Colby

The radical legacy of Abram Colby, one of Georgia’s first Black legislators, was almost erased by racist revisionists.
by Greer Brigham via Scalawag on March 26, 2025
Book cover of "The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920."

Expanding the Boundaries of Reconstruction: Abolitionist Democracy from 1865-1919

Sinha enlarges the temporal boundaries students are accustomed to by covering the end of the 19th century into the Progressive era with the 19th Amendment.
by Erik J. Chaput, Russell J. DeSimone via Commonplace on July 16, 2024
An 1863 illustration from “Le Monde illustré” of formerly enslaved people celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation.

What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920?

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on June 11, 2024
Painting of the Mexican railway

On the Shared Histories of Reconstruction in the Americas

In the 19th century, civil wars tore apart the US, Mexico and Argentina. Then came democracy’s fight against reaction.
by Evan C. Rothera via Aeon on January 16, 2024
Mirror images of General James Longstreet.

How a Die-Hard Confederate General Became a Civil Rights–Supporting Republican

James Longstreet became an apostate for supporting black civil rights during Reconstruction.
by Matthew E. Stanley via Jacobin on January 5, 2024
Gen. James Longstreet.

The Conquered General

The back-and-forth life of Confederate James Longstreet.
by Richard Kreitner via Slate on November 20, 2023
Article about the KKK from an old copy of the Atlantic

What The Atlantic Got Wrong About Reconstruction

In 1901, a series of articles took a dim view of the era, and of the idea that all Americans ought to participate in the democratic process.
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
A drawing of James Longstreet, zoomed in on his eyes.

The Confederate General Whom All the Other Confederates Hated

James Longstreet became a champion of Reconstruction. Why?
by Eric Foner via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
Picture of Frederick Douglass overlaid on a poster advertising a speech of his.

The Annotated Frederick Douglass

In 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping America in the pages of "The Atlantic."
by Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
W.E.B. Du Bois speaking in 1949.

During Reconstruction, a Brutal ‘War on Freedom’

First-person accounts of those scarred in many ways by the era’s violence suggest Reconstruction did not fail, it was overthrown by violence.
by Stephanie McCurry via Washington Post on January 25, 2023
Illustration of W.E.B DuBois

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Abolition Democracy

The enduring legacy and capacious vision of Black Reconstruction.
by Gerald Horne via The Nation on May 3, 2022
Cameron Maynard stands at attention by the monument to Confederate soldiers at the South Carolina Statehouse on July 10, 2017, in Columbia, S.C.
partner

What We’ve Gotten Wrong About the History of Reconstruction

The erasure of Black leaders from the most misunderstood period in American history.
by Robert Greene II, Tyler D. Parry via Made By History on January 23, 2022
Three black students holding hands though the smoke during the Children's Crusade

The Authoritarian Right’s 1877 Project

As the GOP undermines Black political rights in the present, some right-wing intellectuals are rationalizing Black disenfranchisement in the past.
by Eric Levitz via Intelligencer on December 14, 2021
A cartoon by Thomas Nast, depicting Johnson as a king and the race riots that occurred at a Radical Republican convention in New Orleans.

‘The Failed Promise’ Review: The Mad King and the Lost Cause

Frederick Douglass and Republican legislators had high hopes for Andrew Johnson—but ended up impeaching him.
by Randall Fuller via The Wall Street Journal on August 20, 2021
Image interference of Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

3 Tropes of White Victimhood

Leading conservative pundits today are pounding themes that were popular among opponents of Reconstruction.
by Lawrence B. Glickman via The Atlantic on July 20, 2021
A man during the Capitol Siege holding a Confederate flag.

The Case for a Third Reconstruction

The enduring lesson of American history is that the republic is always in danger when white supremacist sedition and violence escape justice.
by Manisha Sinha via New York Review of Books on February 3, 2021
A crowd of people with one person waving the Confederate flag

Learning from the Failure of Reconstruction

The storming of the Capitol was an expression of the antidemocratic strands in American history.
by Eric Foner, Isaac Chotiner via The New Yorker on January 13, 2021

For the First Time, America May Have an Anti-Racist Majority

Not since Reconstruction has there been such an opportunity for the advancement of racial justice.
by Adam Serwer via The Atlantic on September 8, 2020

Racist Litter

A review of Eric Foner's The Second Founding.
by Randall Kennedy via London Review of Books on July 30, 2020

Reconstruction in America

Mass lynchings of Black people following the Civil War.
by Jennifer Rae Taylor, Kiara Boone, Jonathan Gibson, Sade Stevens, Kayla Vinson, Trey Walk, Sumita Rajpurohit, Breana Lamkin via Equal Justice Initiative on April 23, 2020
Political cartoon of people of all races sharing Thanksgiving dinner.

Teaching the Reconstruction Era Through Political Cartoons

A public historian recommends tactics for explaining an oft-left out period.
by Nick Sacco via Muster on January 14, 2020

An Unfinished Revolution

A new three-part PBS documentary explores the failure of Reconstruction and the Redemption of the South.
by James Oakes via New York Review of Books on November 21, 2019

An Unreconstructed Nation: On Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Stony the Road”

A new history of Reconstruction traces the roots of American “respectability” politics through artwork.
by Robert D. Bland via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 10, 2019

A Very Great Change

The 1868 presidential election through the eyes of a Southern white woman.
by Stephanie McCurry via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 16, 2019

How the South Won the Civil War

During Reconstruction, true citizenship finally seemed in reach for black Americans. Then their dreams were dismantled.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on April 1, 2019

The Urgency of a Third Reconstruction

The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment marked a turning point in U.S. history. Yet 150 years later, its promises remain unfulfilled.
by Robert Greene II via Dissent on July 9, 2018
Inside the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, AL.
partner

How the New Monument to Lynching Unravels a Historical Lie

Lies about history long protected lynching.
by Nina Silber via Made By History on May 2, 2018

Introducing Reconstruction

The new Slate Academy finds the seeds of our present politics in the period after the Civil War.
by Jamelle Bouie, Rebecca Onion via Slate on October 27, 2017

Yes, Gone With the Wind Is Another Neo-Confederate Monument

How the classic film helped promote a Reconstruction myth that was central to the maintenance of Jim Crow.
by Ed Kilgore via Intelligencer on August 30, 2017
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