Departments

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Reconstruction

  • 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: 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: 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: 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. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    9/8/2020

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

    by Adam Serwer

    Atlantic writer Adam Serwer argues that people who want to understand this year should look not to 1968, but to 1868, when a moment of potential for establishing interracial democracy through government intervention seemed possible. 

  • 9/6/2020

    Americans Have Feared Another Civil War Since the End of the Last One

    by Richard Kreitner

    The ink was hardly dry on Lee's surrender at Appomattox before Andrew Johnson's conciliation toward the former Confederacy clashed with the unfulfilled goals of freed slaves and radical Republicans to threaten further violence. These fault lines have been hidden but never healed in the restored American union.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    8/28/2020

    The Massacre That Emboldened White Supremacists

    by William Briggs and Jon Krakauer

    The Colfax Massacre, sparked by white supremacists' refusal to accept a state election result, set in motion a series of legal rulings that made it virtually impossible for the federal government to prosecute civil rights violations by private citizens, ensuring that mob violence and racial oppression would continue. 

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    8/21/2020

    What Happens if Donald Trump Fights the Election Results?

    In 1876 norms governing fair elections broke down beyond the ability of the courts to resolve. The partisan deadlock that ensued was resolved with political dealmaking that relegated Black Americans to second-class citizenship for a century. Anyone who fears a repeat of the 2000 election had better prepare for a repeat of 1876.

  • SOURCE: Ideastream
    7/16/2020

    Historian Eric Foner Disputes ‘Fake History’ Of Reconstruction Era

    Foner has dedicated much his career to correcting this mistaken notion Reconstruction was a failure through his work as an academic as well as by authoring numerous books. A professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, Foner is this year’s Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Lifetime Achievement winner.