Thread by @AmericanStudier

150 years ago this week, the small Louisiana town of Colfax was the site of one of the Reconstruction era's most violent acts of racial terrorism (a far too competitive category), with more than 100 Black militia members killed by a white supremacist mob.

That specific sesquicentennial, like Reconstruction's broader 150th anniversary, still needs a more central place in our collective memories. So this week I'll blog about a handful of Reconstruction histories we could better remember, including Colfax & many more.

Starting with today's post on why the Freedmen's Bureau failed (fuck you very much, Andrew Johnson), & lasting & important legacies of that organization nonetheless. #twitterstorians

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2023/04/april-…

PS. Sharing the invite for an event in Colfax this Thursday that will include the dedication of a memorial (h/t @Adonna_Biel):

Today's @SatEvePost Considering History column on Black legislators during Reconstruction is very much related to this week's blog series on better remembering that fraught & fragile & vital American period:

saturdayeveningpost.com/2023/04/consid…

& for today's post, on three telling stages in the life & career of one of our very worst presidents & the man most responsible for Reconstruction's failures, Andrew Johnson:

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2023/04/april-…

150 years ago today, the small Louisiana town of Colfax exploded in racism violence & terrorism targeting African American militia members & the town's Black community more broadly. That massacre was unfortunately far too typical of the entire Reconstruction period.

So for the next post in my Reconstruction blog series, on what we can learn about the failures of Reconstruction, the resurgence of white supremacy, & more from Colfax & a few other Reconstruction massacres.

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2023/04/april-…

When it comes to the goal of better remembering Reconstruction, we've got an existing example of the very best ways we can do so, both in terms of revising the histories & in terms of engaging with the propagandistic perspectives that mythologized the past in the first place.

I'm talking, of course, about one of the very best books of American #History ever written & the subject of today's blog post, W.E.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America (1935)! #twitterstorians @AAIHS

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2023/04/april-…