506. THE ENDURING FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION, 1877 TO TODAY

Willie Hiatt

In the years after the Civil War, three constitutional amendments and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 helped define new opportunities for African-Americans. However, successes soon proved fleeting. After 1877, many southerners rejected the idea of former slaves voting, holding office, and enjoying the rights of citizenship. Lynching, sexual violence against women, and the codification of legal segregation emerged in force in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Similarly, racism and discomfort with black citizenship also prompted strong northern opposition and a collapse of support for black citizenship beyond the South. As the second of two stand-alone talks on racial history, this lecture explores the failures of Reconstruction after 1877 and its troubled legacy to today.

10:00-12 noon                                                                                                       1 Session

Wednesday, October 22                                                                                         Fee:  $30

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Willie Hiatt, a Kentucky native, is an Associate Professor of History at Long Island University, Post Campus. He’s the author of The Rarified Air of the Modern: Airplanes and Technological Modernity in the Andes (Oxford, 2016). His current research is an oral history project examining how Maoist insurgents in Peru targeted high-tension towers during the Shining Path movement (1980-92).