Displaying all articles tagged:
Reconstruction
just asking questions
Mar. 27, 2022
Lessons From Lincoln on Solving Today’s Bitterest Conflicts A talk with author John Avlon on how the 16th president’s strategy for post-war peace can still guide America through crisis, at home and abroad.
By Ed Kilgore
The Authoritarian Right’s 1877 Project As the GOP undermines Black political rights in the present, some right-wing intellectuals are rationalizing Black disenfranchisement in the past.
By Eric Levitz
The Legal Shadowboxing Over the Texas Abortion Ban Merrick Garland vowed to protect abortion seekers, and scholars proposed ways to thwart the law. But no “vigilante” suit means no legal action.
By Ed Kilgore
voting rights
June 29, 2021
Bipartisan Voting-Rights Legislation May Simply Be Impossible The pious hopes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema notwithstanding, we are in a historic moment, like Reconstruction, when one party is incorrigible.
By Ed Kilgore
race and space
Apr. 20, 2021
MoMA’s ‘Reconstructions’ Show Changed My Relationship to Space and Cities Should Black designers revise a history that erased them? Or should they revolt?
By Kimberly Drew
voting rights
Apr. 17, 2021
Jim Crow’s Ominous Lessons on Voter Suppression Republicans bristle at talk of Jim Crow 2.0, but there are clear echoes of the era of Black disenfranchisement in their drive for voting restrictions.
By Ed Kilgore
Today’s Gridlock Is Like a 19th-Century Nightmare We’re experiencing the instability and close partisan competition of the Gilded Age along with the big differences and fury of the 1850s.
By Ed Kilgore
impeachment trial
Feb. 11, 2021
Impeachment Is Literally Congressional Self-Defense in Trump’s Case It’s the only way Congress can defend itself against executive abuses of power — this time, it’s was physical.
By Ed Kilgore
What the Filibuster Has Cost America The damage has been massive, and it’s past time for reform.
By Ed Kilgore
This Isn’t the Revolution They Think It Is Some on the far right say they want another 1776. But it’s a different, darker history that’s repeating itself.
By Talia Lavin
past is prologue
Sept. 7, 2020
The Last Time a Contested Election Tore the Country Apart The 1876 presidential election and the compromise that settled it offer some key lessons as the possibility of a contested 2020 election result looms.
By Ed Kilgore
No, Uncle Joe, Trump Is Hardly Our First Racist President Trump may rival the most racist of presidents given the context of their times, but he hardly invented presidential racism.
By Ed Kilgore
what’s past is prologue
June 19, 2020
What Will It Take to Make Juneteenth a National Holiday? The long struggle for Martin Luther King Jr. Day offers lessons that could ease the path to making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
By Ed Kilgore
george floyd protests
June 9, 2020
The Army Is Finally Taking the Names of Traitors Off of Its Bases America may finally be repudiating the idea that the Confederacy — and the Neo-Confederacy — were honorable parts of the national legacy.
By Ed Kilgore
impeachment
Jan. 19, 2020
Pence Is Right: Trump Is a Lot Like Andrew Johnson Pence embraces the discredited Jim Crow theory of Johnson’s victimization and Reconstruction’s evil. But Trump does emulate his scofflaw behavior.
By Ed Kilgore
Haley Says Dylann Roof ‘Hijacked’ Confederate Battle Flag Most of us thought Haley got it when she took down the Battle Flag from South Carolina’s statehouse in 2015. That assessment may have been premature.
By Ed Kilgore
What We Can Learn From the First Presidential Impeachment Like Trump, Andrew Johnson defied Congress and the Constitution in multiple ways that were hard to capture in articles of impeachment.
By Ed Kilgore
Racism Has Thwarted American Ideals From the Beginning, and Still Does Instead of complaining about greater recognition of racism in American history, conservatives should realize it has been their enemy, too.
By Ed Kilgore
Celebrate Racism! It’s Jefferson Davis’s Birthday in Alabama And yet you wonder why this state enacted an aggressively reactionary abortion law?
By Ed Kilgore
just asking questions
May 31, 2019
Talking With Author Jared Cohen About History’s Best ‘Accidental Presidents’ Taking stock of the vice-presidents who rose to the nation’s top job, from the disastrous Andrew Johnson to the surprisingly successful Harry Truman.
By Benjamin Hart
john singleton
May 1, 2019
Why America Needs More Movies Like John Singleton’s Rosewood The director’s 1997 film is one of the few to explore black experiences with racist terrorism between the Civil War and the civil-rights movement.
By Zak Cheney-Rice
voting rights
Mar. 21, 2019
Democrats’ Voting-Rights Push Could Begin a Third Reconstruction Partisan polarization over voting rights shows how much political power, now as in the 1860s and 1960s, depends on who participates in democracy.
By Ed Kilgore
2018 midterms
Nov. 20, 2018
Dixieland’s Favorite Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith Sported Confederate Garb in 2014 The GOP senator who keeps saying racially offensive things saw nothing wrong with donning Confederate garb at Jefferson Davis’s home.
By Ed Kilgore
William Barber II and the MLK Legacy of Church-Based Activism The North Carolina–based founder of Moral Mondays is a prophetic voice for progressive politics in the MLK mold.
By Ed Kilgore
Yes, Gone With the Wind Is Another Neo-Confederate Monument While Gone With the Wind is not a chiseled monument in a public place, it contributed to the mythology supporting Jim Crow just as powerfully.
By Ed Kilgore
Trump Joins the Neo-Confederates By professing neutrality between those who support and oppose racial equality, Trump is joining the generations of pols who whitewashed Jim Crow.
By Ed Kilgore
New Orleans Pulls Down a Monument to Post–Civil War White Terrorism The fitting demolition of an edifice honoring post–Civil War resistance to black voting rights.
By Ed Kilgore
Paul LePage Explains Civil Rights to John Lewis Apparently the man who was beaten at the Edmund Pettus Bridge needs to thank Republicans.
By Ed Kilgore