Our Long Reconstruction

There is no shortage of articles and op-eds that attempt to argue that we are still fighting the Civil War or that the Civil War never really ended. At a time of increased racial violence and a rise in white nationalist groups, we are also seeing a number of new books about what we might describe as our ‘long Reconstruction’—the idea being that Reconstruction never really ended or that the violence and racial tension that we are experiencing is a direct result of this “failed experiment” in bi-racial democracy between 1865 and 1877.

Such an approach can be incredibly helpful and certainly offers the possibility of numerous insights into the long and painful history of white supremacy in our country, but it also runs the risk of collapsing history and minimizing important changes that have taken place over the past 150 years.

Either way, both Peniel Joseph and Jeremi Suri are first-rate historians and their scholarship is well worth your time.

I have not had a chance to read Peniel Joseph’s new book, The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century, but here is the author discussing his book at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

You may also want to check out Jeremi Suri, whose book Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy was published just a few weeks ago. This one is on my reading table. I hope to get to it soon.

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