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A Disputed Election, a Constitutional Crisis, Polarisation… Welcome to 1876

Eric Foner sees parallels with our own time but warns that yesterday’s solution would be a disaster.

Beyond Speeches and Leaders

The role of Black churches in the Reconstruction of the United States.
Lithograph depicting police attacking African Americans in New Orleans, 1874

On Riots and Resistance

Exploring freedpeople’s struggle against police brutality during Reconstruction.

History, Civil Rights and the Original Cancel Culture

The initial movement to build memorials to the Confederacy and its supposed “lost cause” were the original cancel culture.
A campaign illustration supporting Ulysses S. Grant for the Election of 1868.

A World “Transfixed”: The International Resonance of American Political Crises

The world's eyes are upon America as it struggles with racism and inequality. This is nothing new.

J.F.K.’s “Profiles in Courage” Has a Racism Problem. What Should We Do About It?

Kennedy defined courage as a willingness to take an unpopular stand in service of a larger, higher cause. But what cause?
Drawing of two men on horse overlaid with writing regarding prejudice and civil rights

The 14th Amendment Was Meant to Be a Protection Against State Violence

The Supreme Court has betrayed the promise of equal citizenship by allowing police to arrest and kill Americans at will.
A campaign illustration featuring busts of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson over festoons featuring eagles, smoke, and the American flag.

Andrew Johnson’s Abuse of Pardons Was Relentless

Worried that the presidential power to undo convictions can be taken too far? Look no further than Lincoln’s successor.
A political cartoon depicting the White League and the KKK uniting over the Lost Cause and the subjugation of freedmen

Blood in the Pool: The 1868 Bossier Massacre

They all but succeeded in scouring the blood away into nothingness, but it lingered, detectable underneath the supposedly cleansed earth.
Formal photograph of Ulysses S. Grant.

Public Monuments and Ulysses S. Grant’s Contested Legacy

It is fair to ask whether Grant’s prewar experiences define the entirety of his character, and who sets the bar for which public figures deserve commemoration.
partner

"It Has Not Been My Habit to Yield"

Charles Sumner and the fight for equal naturalization rights.
Robert Smalls

What Woodrow Wilson Did to Robert Smalls

We all know, in the abstract, that Wilson was a white supremacist. But here’s how he wielded his racism against one accomplished Black American.
People raising their fists and gathered around the Robert E. Lee Memorial in Richmond, Virginia

Europe in 1989, America in 2020, and the Death of the Lost Cause

A whole vision of history seems to be leaving the stage.
Robert E. Lee Memorial covered in graffiti and projections and surrounded by protesters.

The Racism of Confederate Monuments Extends to Voter Suppression

GOP-led state legislatures have not only prevented voters from exercising their rights as citizens, they have usurped local control to remove monuments legally.
Freedmen's Memorial

Yes, the Freedmen’s Memorial Uses Racist Imagery. But Don’t Tear It Down.

Keep in mind what it meant to the people who created it.
Protesters in front of a Confederate monument hold a banner that reads "Take the statue down."

Ole Miss’s Monument to White Supremacy

New evidence shows what the 30-foot-tall Confederate memorial was actually meant to commemorate.  
Woman in the doorway of a kitchen.

Abolish Oil

The New Deal's legacies of infrastructure and economic development, and entrenching structural racism, reveal the potential and mistakes to avoid for the Green New Deal.
A man plowing with a mule

Revisiting “Forty Acres and a Mule”

The backstory to the backstory of America’s mythic promise.

Eugenics and the White Moderate

Reflections on the COVID crisis from Reconstruction.

How White Backlash Controls American Progress

Backlash dynamics are one of the defining patterns of the country’s history.

Is Impeachment Only About Getting a Conviction?

A new history of Andrew Johnson’s trial reminds us the impeachment is a tool to constrain executive abuse of power and publicize dissent on matters of policy.

By Bullet or Ballot: One of the Only Successful Coups in American History

David Zucchino on the white supremacist plot to take over Wilmington, North Carolina.

Trump's not Richard Nixon. He's Andrew Johnson.

Betrayal. Paranoia. Cowardice. We've been here before.

A Personal Act of Reparation

The long aftermath of a North Carolina man’s decision to deed a plot of land to his former slaves.

White Supremacy in the Academy: The 1913 Meeting of the American Historical Association

The historical interpretations crafted by the men of the Dunning School might now be largely discredited and discarded. But their legacies remain.

Eric Foner’s Story of American Freedom

Eric Foner has helped us better understand the ambiguous consequences of what were almost always only partial victories.

Making Impeachment Matter

Democrats need to face up to their constitutional duty without fear.

Frederick Douglass’s Vision for a Reborn America

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, he dreamed of a pluralist utopia.

What the Reconstruction Meant for Women

Southern legal codes included parallel language pairing “master and slave” and “husband and wife.”

The Achievements, and Compromises, of Two Reconstruction-era Amendments

While they advanced African American rights, they had serious flaws, Eric Foner writes.

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