Biographer Chernow "gives us a military genius who understood the full scope of the war and pursued a winning strategy," writes reviewer Richard Moe, "and a sometimes inept president who, though unschooled in politics, made his highest priority the protection of the lives and rights of freed slaves."
Americans should build this pivotal post–Civil War era into the new politics of historical memory.1877
Forget that Donald Trump said something commendable about Frederick Douglass--perhaps a first for Trump--the autobiography of Douglass is a classic, and reading it again is a fit way to commemorate Black History Month. Washington Post book editor Ron Charles gives ample reason why.
We need a moral movement to create change.
Reader Comments: Bertolt Brecht's message for our times; This is How the Future Voted; The Rest is Up to Us; Racism and White Nationalism up to the election and after; FBI plot?; Trump and Reconstruction-Era White Supremacy; Support MST School Against Brazilian Terror; Healthcare Justice Conference in January - planned before the election, now even more important; and more...
Reader Comments: The Bernie Generation, and Bernie and After, and Hillary; Clinton's Attack on Reconstruction; Backlash to Corbyn and Sanders; Flint, Racism, African Americans and the Criminal Governor Snyder; The Syrian Peace Talks;
Announcements: Building on Bernie: What Comes Next; Migrant Labor in China: A Post-Socialist Transformation; #BlackLivesMatter - Books on Black Liberation
Monday night, Hillary Clinton butchered Reconstruction's history. It's a good opportunity to correct the record, and glean why Lincoln really was America's greatest president. Reconstruction in reality was a briefly successful attempt to build a true democracy in the South. Clinton implies that it was Southern anger at unjust Reconstruction policy that led them to institute Jim Crow, but Jim Crow was the goal from the very end of the war.
Reader Comments: Left and Labor Dialogue on Sanders and Corbyn; A Sanders - John Lewis ticket?; David Hilliard on Black Panther film; 9/11 and Cancer; Labor Debate on Who to Endorse; Kim Davis; Student loans and College Costs; Sean O'Casey; Reconstruction;
Announcements : Chicago Freedom Struggles Through the Lens of Art Shay -Sept 17-Dec 19; Operation Condor film, Bolivia's Largest Film Ever, Coming to NYC Theaters; Witness Venezuela's Elections This December
I celebrate Radical Reconstruction, a brief moment of glory, no matter how blindly and halfheartedly we, as a nation, did it. Did Reconstruction end racism? No. Does that make it a failure? No again. Considering it a failure is like considering the civil rights movement a failure because it only abolished segregation and not racism.
Reader Comments: Straight Outta Compton; Bernie Sanders and Labor; GOP Racism & Immigration; China's Currency Devaluation; Artic Oil Drilling; NLRB and Faster Union Elections; Amnesty and the Sex Trade;
Announcements: Film: Warrior, the Life of Leonard Peltier - New York - September 12; 60 Years of Rebels and Reformers - New York - October 3
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