This Ghost of Slavery
A play of past and present
On Reconstruction: Lonnie G. Bunch III, Drew Gilpin Faust, Eric Foner, Adam Harris, Peniel E. Joseph, Vann R. Newkirk II, and Jordan Virtue on America’s most radical experiment. Plus David W. Blight annotates Frederick Douglass, a new play by Anna Deavere Smith, and more.
A play of past and present
The Atlantic revisits Reconstruction.
No one should fear a history that asks a country to live up to its highest ideals.
The federal government abandoned Reconstruction in 1877, but Black people didn’t give up on the moment’s promise.
In 1901, a series of articles took a dim view of the era, and of the idea that all Americans ought to participate in the democratic process.
In 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping America in the pages of The Atlantic.
How one photographer documented the disappearing landscape of Houston’s Fourth Ward
In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.
John Brown and the Secret Six—the abolitionists who funded the raid on Harpers Ferry—confronted a question as old as America: When is violence justified?
And the grandmother who wouldn’t let him get away with it
Freedpeople and their advocates persuaded the nation to embrace schooling for all.
James Longstreet became a champion of Reconstruction. Why?
A poem