Reconstruction 3.0

Social media is a depressing place these days, largely thanks to the failure of two grand juries to indict police officers in the deaths of unarmed black men. At this point, many Americans are fed up, angry, hopeless, or some combination of the three. Opinion pieces have cropped up bearing the message that America has always been a land of white supremacy, and will likely remain that way. Interviewed in a New York Times blog piece, philosopher Shannon Sullivan described the task of people fighting racial oppression as “absurd.” Even Jon Stewart could not muster any jokes after a Staten Island grand jury failed to indict the police officer who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold.

Pessimism does, indeed, seem warranted. But as Sullivan’s comment in the New York Times makes clear, too much pessimism brings with it the danger of undermining the cause of reform. Too many want to ascribe the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and countless others to immutable forces outside the control of government policy, not likely to change anytime soon.

One period of American history that offers some lessons for the promises and pitfalls of movements to uproot entrenched social ills is Reconstruction, the 15 years from 1863 to 1877 during which the North attempted to reconfigure the South’s society and politics away from slavery. Reconstruction is a useful touchstone because it remains the mother of all such reform efforts: the attempt of the country to reunite itself and integrate 4 million new citizens whose humanity was not recognized for the nation’s first century.

Reconstruction is also instructive because very little was off the table. Everything from serious federal civil rights laws and the encouragement of black voting to even land redistribution saw serious consideration. In the immediate aftermath of slavery, people knew that racial and economic disparities were closely related, and deserved attention together.

The results of this effort were, of course, mixed. Congress did not give land to former slaves, but through the Freedman’s Bureau it worked to make public education available. Some of these initiatives also had advantages for poor whites, and Congress worked with Republican-controlled state governments to make progress on civil rights.

Reconstruction’s ultimate impermanence had numerous causes, but chief among them was the North’s unwillingness to address its own racism, the backlash of Southern whites, and the corruption of the federal and state governments. Later historians may have exaggerated this last factor, but it underscores the extent to which government policy depends on government competence. As Rutgers history professor James Goodman has pointed out, a belief that “government had an obligation to join the struggle for equality” was a prerequisite not just for Reconstruction, but also for the Civil Rights movement 100 years later. The end of Reconstruction, of course, would lead eventually to Jim Crow and separate but equal.

What does this history have to do with our current racial problems? First, the issues raised by police violence in communities of color implicate more than just racial prejudice, but also the economic and educational disparities that go along with it.

Because of the extreme nature of the Civil War and its aftermath, Reconstruction was one of a few periods in which Americans grappled with these connections to implement comprehensive solutions. Today, such a program would involve once again making the funding of public education more equitable, pursuing a more robust course of federal intervention against local civil rights abuses, and bringing far more voices of color to the policy-making table.

Another key lesson of Reconstruction is that government can begin to address significant social issues. Today, young people especially have a deep mistrust of government. But to forge a more equitable social compact, we need to maintain a belief that, working with the public, government can create more just institutions.

Finally, democracy is a team sport. In his history of the period, W.E.B. Du Bois, Class of 1890, argued for the key role played by African-Americans during Reconstruction, and further made the case that the ultimate failure of Reconstruction had to do with the lack of unity between poor Southern whites and freed slaves. Today, a similar analysis would underscore the need for coalition-building to ensure that current movements do not succumb to the same racial divisions.

Reconstruction is not a perfect analogy for today’s troubles. Most crucially, the North has its own history of racial animosity that is relevant to any discussion of American racism. But the point of looking to Reconstruction is that the kind of concerted effort at political and social reform undertaken so explicitly in the South in the 1860s and ‘70s, and in the 1960s during the Civil Rights era, is needed once again throughout the country.

That kind of movement will require faith that society and government, working in concert, can make America a country that lives up to its ideals. This movement may already be afoot, and it will require hardheaded political realism to implement actual policies. But more than anything, it will require hope that the United States can, in the spirit of Gettysburg and Selma, have “a new birth of freedom” for all its people.

Nelson L. Barrette '17, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.