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Arts & Culture

RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR

Group of freedmen, including children, gathered by a canal in Richmond, Va., in 1865.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Group of freedmen, including children, gathered by a canal in Richmond, Va., in 1865.

Stream now or tune in Saturday, Sept. 12, 2020 from 11 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. on KPBS TV

RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, a new four-hour documentary executive produced and hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., will premiere Tuesdays, April 9 and 16, 2019 on PBS nationwide.

Professor Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, presents the definitive history of one of the least understood chapters in American history — the transformative years following the American Civil War, when the nation struggled to rebuild itself in the face of profound loss, massive destruction and revolutionary social change.

“Reconstruction is one of the most important and consequential chapters in American history,” said Gates. “It is also among the most overlooked, misunderstood and misrepresented. Our film will tell the real story of Reconstruction, honoring the struggle of the African Americans who fought their way out of slavery and challenged the nation to live up to the founding ideals of democracy, freedom and equality. But we will also tell the tragic story of the sustained and often violent pushback against Reconstruction’s determination to secure equal rights for black people, and the subsequent rise of white supremacy leading to the implementation of Jim Crow segregation. More than 150 years later, this struggle continues.”

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Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, and Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, being interviewed for RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR.
Courtesy of McGee Media
Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, and Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, being interviewed for RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR.

The series includes interviews from leading historians, authors and other experts, including:

  • David W. Blight, Ph.D., author and Class of 1954 Professor of American History, and Director, Gilder Lehrman Center, Yale University:
  • Congressman James E. Clyburn, U.S. House of Representatives, South Carolina 6th District
  • Jelani Cobb, a staff writer for The New Yorker and The Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism, Columbia University
  • Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, and Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
  • Eric Foner, Ph.D., the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University, and author of Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution
  • Edna Greene Medford, author, and Professor and Former Chair, Department of History, Howard University
  • Mitch Landrieu, the former Mayor of New Orleans
  • Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, the nonprofit legal advocacy group that created the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., executive producer and host of RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, and Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, walk through the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.
Courtesy of McGee Media
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., executive producer and host of RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, and Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, walk through the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.

The film takes a broad view of the Reconstruction era and its aftermath, beginning with the hopeful moment of war’s end and emancipation in 1865, and carrying through to 1915, when the nation was fully entrenched in Jim Crow segregation.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the nation was devastated by death and destruction. Members of the U.S. Congress endeavored to reunite North and South while granting citizenship rights to newly freed African Americans.

Millions of former slaves and free black people sought out their rightful place as equal citizens under the law. The dream of an interracial democracy was brief, and the broken promises of the Reconstruction era haunt the country to this day.

Though tragically short-lived, this bold democratic experiment was, in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, a “brief moment in the sun” for African Americans, when they could advance and achieve education, exercise their right to vote, and run for and win public office.

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Portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois, 1907.
Courtesy of National Potrait Gallery
Portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois, 1907.

The first half of the documentary centers on the pivotal decade following the Civil War rebellion, charting black progress and highlighting the accomplishments of the many political leaders who emerged to usher their communities into this new era of freedom.

Booker T. Washington speaking to a crowd in Mound Bayou, Miss.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Booker T. Washington speaking to a crowd in Mound Bayou, Miss.

The series’ second half looks beyond that hopeful decade, when the arc of history bent backwards.

Portrait of Ida B. Wells.
Courtesy of The Internet Archive
Portrait of Ida B. Wells.

Tracing the unraveling of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow segregation in the closing years of the 19th century, the film also look at the myriad ways in which black people continued to acquire land, build institutions and strengthen communities amidst increasing racial violence and repression.

Portrait of Benjamin S. Turner, an ex-slave and one of the first African Americans elected to the United States Congress.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Portrait of Benjamin S. Turner, an ex-slave and one of the first African Americans elected to the United States Congress.

The film also explores the flowering of African American art, music, literature and culture as tools of resistance in the struggle against Jim Crow racism, and the surge of political activism that marked the launch of iconic civil rights organizations.

Portrait of entertainers Bert Williams and George Walker, circa 1905.
Courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
Portrait of entertainers Bert Williams and George Walker, circa 1905.

EPISODE GUIDE:

Hour 1 airs Tuesday, April 9 at 9 p.m on KPBS TV + Wednesday, April 24 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2 - Experience the aftermath of the Civil War — a bewildering, exhilarating and terrifying time. African Americans who had played a crucial role in the war now grapple with the terms and implications of Reconstruction and their hard-won freedom.

Hour 2 airs Tuesday, April 9 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV + Wednesday, April 24 at 10 p.m. on KPBS 2 - Discover how post-Civil War America was a new world. For African Americans, support for their social, economic and political gains did not last. The 1876 presidential election deals Reconstruction a blow as the forces of white supremacy ascend.

Hour 3 airs Tuesday, April 16 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TV + Wednesday, May 1 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2 - Explore 1877-1896, with the rise of Jim Crow and the undermining of Reconstruction’s legal and political legacy. Southern sharecropping, convict leasing, disfranchisement and lynchings drew a “color line” limiting opportunities and destroying lives.

Hour 4 airs Tuesday, April 16 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV + Wednesday, May 1 at 10 p.m. on KPBS 2 - Learn how as America entered the 1900s, Southern propaganda manipulated the story of the Civil War and racist imagery saturated popular culture. African Americans fought back using artistic expression to put forward a “New Negro” for a new century.

WATCH ON YOUR SCHEDULE:

All episodes are currently available for streaming on demand with KPBS Passport, video streaming for members supporting KPBS at $60 or more yearly, using your computer, smartphone, tablet, Roku, AppleTV, Amazon Fire or Chromecast. Learn how to activate your benefit now.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is on Facebook, Instagram, and you can follow @HenryLouisGates on Twitter. #ReconstructionPBS

CREDITS:

A production of McGee Media, Inkwell Films and WETA Washington, DC. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Dyllan McGee are executive producers. Dalton Delan and Anne Harrington are executive producers in charge for WETA. Julia Marchesi is the senior producer and director. Rob Rapley, Stacey Holman and Cyndee Readdean are producers/directors. Music by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky and Oovra Music.