Successes And Failures Of Reconstruction
Successes and Failures of Reconstruction Hold Many Lessons
Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, is the author of many works on American history, including "Reconstruction: America'south Unfinished Revolution" and, nigh recently, "Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Clandestine Railroad."
Updated May 26, 2015, 6:47 AM
Reconstruction was an effort to reunite a nation shattered by civil state of war, build a new society in the Due south on the ashes of slavery, and bring into being for the first time in our history an interracial democracy. Nevertheless this remarkable moment barely exists in Americans' historical memory.
Reconstruction and its aftermath remind u.s.a. that rights in the Constitution are not self-enforcing, and that our liberties tin can never be taken for granted.
The successes and failures of Reconstruction hold many lessons for our ain time. The era reminds us that the liberation of four million people from bondage did non suddenly erase the deep racial prejudices born of slavery, nor assure lasting political or economical equality for the former slaves. Even so Reconstruction also points to the possibility of moving beyond racism toward a more than simply society. That white Republicans, many of whom shared their guild's racial prejudices, nevertheless rewrote the nation'southward laws and Constitution to incorporate the ideal of equal citizenship should exist inspiring in our own fraught times. And the mobilization of former slaves to demand their rights as Americans is an instance of how ordinary people tin assist to change history.
Reconstruction poses a claiming to Americans' historical agreement because we prefer stories with happy endings. Unfortunately, the overthrow of the South'south biracial governments, accomplished in function by terrorist violence, was followed by a long period of legally enforced white supremacy. Yet this itself offers a timely lesson – that there is nothing inevitable or predetermined in the onward march of freedom and equality. Reconstruction and its aftermath remind us that rights in the Constitution are non self-enforcing, and that our liberties can never be taken for granted.
Reconstruction has long been misrepresented, or but neglected, in our schools, and unlike Confederate generals and founders of the Ku Klux Klan, few if any monuments exist to the black and white leaders of that era. Fortunately, the National Park Service has just announced an initiative to identify means of bringing attention to Reconstruction in its historical sites. This is an important first stride in making Reconstruction function of Americans' historical cocky-consciousness.
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Successes And Failures Of Reconstruction,
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/05/26/how-should-americans-remember-reconstruction/successes-and-failures-of-reconstruction-hold-many-lessons
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