Ep.19 - Reconstruction—Pivotal Moments in Black History

Between 1863 and 1877, the U.S. government undertook the task of integrating nearly four million formerly enslaved people into society after the Civil War. The white slaveholding South was forced to change its economic, political, and social relations with African Americans. While the war may have destroyed the institution of slavery and pushed for economic and political changes for an egalitarian society, Reconstruction was short-lived, and from the moment the Civil War ended, whites who had enslaved Blacks searched for any and all means to dismantle it—and they eventually did. Reconstruction can be called “America’s Unfinished Revolution.”