MAKE GOOD THE PROMISES

A broadly ranging study of the Reconstruction era and its misinterpretations.

In a very real sense, note the editors and other contributors in this companion book to the exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Civil War has never ended. Indeed, as a caption to a chilling photograph from Jan. 6, 2021, reads, “The storming of the US Capitol…recalled the political violence of the Reconstruction era.” Reconstruction was a failed enterprise, but not because it was in any way wrong to elevate African Americans to full citizenship. Many of the activists of the era understood that emancipation was only one step on the journey to that goal, which requires economic as well as political advancement. There are two Reconstructions: one White and one Black. The former holds that Reconstruction failed through some inherent corruption in the system, the latter in the failure of the federal government to undertake its platform in full good faith—with President Andrew Johnson, for instance, pulling back on many of its reforms and allowing the Southern states to return to the fold of the Union while retaining many of their exclusionary pre–Civil War laws. As a result, writes historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries, “the Confederate tradition of promoting nostalgia over history has been woven into the fabric of American culture,” with the recent murders of Black citizens by police being a point on a continuum that extends far into the past. The contributors argue that the country as a whole seems willing to engage in a “national reckoning concerning the lies about Reconstruction” even as Republican legislators around the country rush to suppress any curriculum that does more than mention slavery in passing. The book, evenhanded and searching, is enhanced by meaningful photographs from past and present as well as a foreword by Eric Foner.

Students of American history and civil rights activists alike will find much of value in this survey.