The New York Times has an interesting article from historian Eric Foner on The Lost Promise of Reconstruction. From the article:
Among the unanticipated consequences of the election of Donald Trump has been a surge of interest in post-Civil War Reconstruction, when this country first attempted to construct an interracial democracy, and in the restoration of white supremacy that followed. Many Americans feel that we are living at a time like the end of the 19th century, when, in the words of Frederick Douglass, “principles which we all thought to have been firmly and permanently settled” were “boldly assaulted and overthrown.” Douglass was referring to the rights enshrined in three constitutional amendments ratified between 1865 and 1870.
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