The beginning of meaningful democracy was exemplified by new Federal courts, replacing state governments and well-attended state constitutional conventions to Black suffrage, ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, This mandate’s enforcement could rely on the full force and protection of Federal troops in five military zones. In a recent poll of high school graduates, only 20 percent had even heard of Reconstruction, in part because history classes about this period invariably end with the South’s surrender. Experience the aftermath of the Civil War - a bewildering, exhilarating and terrifying time.
My sense is that gaining a deeper understanding of the Reconstruction period can contribute to our analysis of contemporary issues like voting rights, affirmative action, reparations, white supremacy, and the meaning of citizenship. The twelve years that composed the post-war Reconstruction era (1865-77) witnessed a seismic shift in the meaning and makeup of our democracy, with millions of former slaves and free black people seeking out their rightful place as equal citizens under the law. He is shown with the lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson. For just one example, as historian Edward Baptist’s pioneering research demonstrated, in Lowell, Massachusetts, massive mills owned by a group called Boston Associates, “consumed 100,000 days of enslaved people’s labor every year” and this  resulted in enormous profits, investments for further expansion and lavish life styles. This series explores the transformative years following the American Civil War, when the nation struggled to rebuild itself in the face of both profound destruction and revolutionary social change. In the early days of Reconstruction, the expectation of northern business interests had been that the post Reconstruction period would see chattel slavery replaced by wage slavery (euphemistically called “free labor”) to serve the rapidly growing needs of an industrializing nation.

Their subjects look directly into the camera, proudly and, to the modern eye, accusingly.
This astonishing political revolution is effectively portrayed via commentary by dozens of  experts, interviews, documents and graphic, often heart rending visuals in the first two episodes of “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War,” a four-part series written and narrated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on PBS.

Over a hundred and fifty years later, this struggle continues. This series will tell the real story of Reconstruction, honoring the struggle of the African Americans who fought their way out of slavery and challenged the nation to live up to the founding ideals of democracy, freedom, and equality. The twelve years that composed the post-war Reconstruction era (1865-77) witnessed a seismic shift in the meaning and … I would also be remiss not to credit parts of the program (especially episode #3) for their compelling description of the means employed to totally eviscerate Reconstruction: pseudo-scientific racism, eugenics, elaborate mythologies about plantation life,” Sambo art” representation in novels, cartoons, and advertising, rape imagery, Blackface, and the infamous, incalculably detrimental film, J.W.

101-102. In 2019, Henry Louis Gates Jr. will present a vital new four-hour documentary series on Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. Many people, if they have any sense of the era at all, came by it through “Gone With the Wind” or, even more grievously, “The Birth of a Nation.”. It’s a moot point because President Andrew Johnson, the southerner who succeeded Abraham Lincoln and hated African-Americans, quickly nullified the order and the land was returned to the wealthy plantation owners. If achieved, this would be the single most radical structural change in US. This series explores the transformative years following the American Civil War, when the nation struggled to rebuild itself in the face of both profound destruction and revolutionary social change. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. It is also among the most overlooked, misunderstood, and misrepresented. These two economic systems were both subdivisions of Capitalist, or private ownership of the means of production. The Northern power elite gradually came to view Reconstruction as too ambitious, too dangerous, because it raised expectations, especially regarding land tenure and its implications for wealth redistribution. Reconstruction: America After the Civil War explores the transformative years following the American Civil War, when the nation struggled to rebuild itself in the face of profound loss, massive destruction, and revolutionary social change. The North and the South were not discrete economies as commodities and capital flowed between them. Henry Louis Gates Jr., left, wrote and hosts “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War” on PBS. Statement to the Communities We Serve. Award-winning filmmakers Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Dyllan McGee are executive producers. The succession of images insists on their dignity and humanity at a time when these qualities were brutally denied, a point made explicitly late in the series in a segment on the importance of photography in the African-American community. Copyright © 2020 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), all rights reserved. In any event, poor workers in the South could not be trusted with the vote because they were “fledging revolutionaries” and “given the chance, they would insist on wealth redistribution.” Northern elites, not Southerners, were firmly in control of national politics and their priority was to protect capital (property) from an aroused, potentially dangerous working class that was beginning to respond to worsening conditions. I’ve included Marx’s quote because the program failed to devote sufficient attention to the fact that slavery and capitalism were deeply enmeshed and the former was indispensable to the nation’s economic development. The twelve years that composed the post-war Reconstruction era (1865-77) witnessed a seismic shift in the meaning and makeup of our democracy. It’s conceivable that “Reconstruction” could be criticized for being one-sided — for not finding someone to defend the romantic view of Confederate history, or to make the contemporary case that white Americans are economically and culturally victimized. We see a paradox here in that Northern monied elites could righteously oppose slavery while retaining circumscribed notions of inequality (and racism) in a post-slavery world. Others are far more qualified to judge Sherman’s motives  but we can’t rule out the possibility that he only sought to temporarily pacify the recipients. If asked to suggest a fifth episode, I would add something like the following, beginning with three quotes: Without slavery there would be cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. One thought, though: The series’s accounts of violence against African-Americans tend to have an abstract feeling, and some direct insight into the racist mind-set could help to communicate its full force. He can be reached at: Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / 10/01/2020, Bt Cotton in India is a GMO Template for a “monumental irreversible catastrophe”, Assange’s Eighteenth Day at the Old Bailey: Abuse of Power, Breaching Attorney-Client Privilege and Adjournment, The Hysteria of Identity Politics is Devolving Into Violence, In Lieu of a Liberation Strategy: Palestinian Elections Are Designed to Buy Time, Doubt is a Treacherous Path: We must avoid being diverted towards terminal cynicism. African Americans who had played a crucial role in the war now grapple with the terms and implications of Reconstruction and their hard-won freedom. Julia Marchesi is the series producer and director. The American Civil War was fought over which type of slavery would exist in the United State; chattel slavery, as was practiced in the South, or wage slavery, as practiced in the North. How’s this for a state of emergency: An entire region of the country takes up armed resistance against the federal government, brazenly murdering and raping its African-American citizens in a decades-long campaign of terror that subverts and then rewrites the law. The twelve years that composed the post-war Reconstruction era (1865-77) witnessed a seismic shift in the meaning and makeup of our democracy. Other topics receiving careful attention include: creative disenfranchisement maneuvers, the exploitation of enervating indebtedness attendant to new-slavery in the form of sharecropping (neo-slavery) and still another iteration, namely, convict-leasing. The twelve years that composed the post-war Reconstruction era (1865-77) witnessed a seismic shift in the meaning and makeup of our democracy. and the ascendance of black popular culture — are engrossing but less urgent. Henry Louis Gates Jr. presents a vital new four-hour documentary series on Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. One of the first great fruits of Reconstruction is the establishment, in the 14th Amendment, of birthright citizenship, now under attack.