Remembering Reconstruction Struggles Over the Meaning of America's Most Turbulent Era

Although the period of Reconstruction from 1863 to 1877 is commonly understood as an "unfinished revolution" for civil rights, national expansion, racial identity formation, and social reform, few scholars have attempted to understand the various and competing social and historical memories of this pivotal and violent period. While acknowledging views of Reconstruction have changed for professional historians, relatively little is known about how popular memories of the period were shaped and transmitted throughout American culture beyond the academy. By questioning how Americans have remembered Reconstruction and how those memories have shaped the nation's social and political history through the late twentieth century, Remembering Reconstruction places memory at the heart of historical inquiry.