A Window Opened, Then Shut

Reconstruction:

“The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West. They descended into Hell; and in the third century they arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen.”

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1935:

Celebrating the end of slavery

“It was a Jubilee of Freedom”

“The work does not end with the abolition of slavery, but only begins.”

Frederick Douglass:

“All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.”

Civil Rights Bill of 1866

“Despite its limitations, Congressional Reconstruction was indeed a radical departure, a stunning and unprecedented experiment in interracial democracy.”

Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction

Reconstruction Act of 1867

The First Vote

“In America, the ballot not only identified who could vote, it defined a collective national identity.”Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction

Conventions and Union League Clubs

“We claim exactly the same rights, privileges and immunities as are enjoyed by white men—we ask nothing more and will be content with nothing

less. . .”Black voters at an Alabama Convention

Immortalized by Currier and Ives

Sixteen African Americans sat in Congress during Reconstruction.

A racist cartoon against black enfranchisement

Not without protest…

New Orleans

A dream of integrated schools 100+ years before Brown v. Board of Education

Then, the window was shut. It would not reopen for another 100 years. . .