Overview

The promise of Reconstruction sparked a transformative era in American history as free and newly emancipated Black Americans sought to redefine their place in a nation still grappling with the legacy of slavery. Often remembered as a period of failed progressive change that gave way to Jim Crow and second-class citizenship, Reconstruction’s tragic narrative has long overshadowed the resilience and agency of African Americans during this time. Requiem for Reconstruction chronicles Reconstruction’s legacy by focusing on key Black figures such as South Carolina congressman Robert Smalls, Judge William Whipper, writer Frances Rollin, and others who shaped postbellum Black America. Robert D. Bland traces the impact of the Reconstruction generation—Black Americans born between 1840 and 1870 who saw Reconstruction as a defining political movement and worked to preserve its legacy by establishing a new set of historical practices such as formulating new archives, shaping local community counternarratives, using the Black press to inform national audiences about Southern Republican politics, and developing a framework to interpret the recent past’s connection to their present world. Set in South Carolina’s Lowcountry—a hub of Black freedom, landownership, and activism—this book shows how late nineteenth-century Black leaders, educators, and journalists built a powerful countermemory of Reconstruction, defying the dominant white narrative that sought to erase their contributions.

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9781469691879

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Reviews

""With thorough research and methodology, Robert Bland navigates the complicated road to freedom and how Black people, countering many and various limitations, created and preserved their own history--the true history of Reconstruction. Requiem for Reconstruction is a major contribution to the booming field on memory studies, elucidating the deliberate effort to erase Black contributions to postbellum American history. This is a brilliant book, brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed.""--Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln: A History

""This book's exploration of the Reconstruction generation and the Black countermemory it built is a groundbreaking contribution to the field, successfully integrating Civil War and Reconstruction scholarship with African American political and intellectual history. It is an important, insightful, and exciting work.""--Amy Murrell Taylor, author of Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War's Slave Refugee Camps ""With thorough research and methodology, Robert Bland navigates the complicated road to freedom and how Black people, countering many and various limitations, created and preserved their own history--the true history of Reconstruction. Requiem for Reconstruction is a major contribution to the booming field on memory studies, elucidating the deliberate effort to erase Black contributions to postbellum American history. This is a brilliant book, brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed.""--Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln: A History

Author Information

Robert D. Bland is assistant professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Tennessee.

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