Understanding the significance of Reconstruction era in SC’s history
Columbia will host a public symposium to explore the history and racial legacy of the Reconstruction Era and how its violent overthrow connects the state’s past to its present.
Organized by the University of South Carolina History Center and Historic Columbia, “The Reconstruction Era: History and Public Memory” marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Reconstruction era. Special guests includePulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner, U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, the state’s first African-American member of Congress since Reconstruction, along with scholars and historians.
Foner will open the symposiumat 6 p.m. Thursday at Ladson Presbyterian Church about the significance of Reconstruction for South Carolina. The DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, Foner won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2011 book, “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery” and is well known for his seminal book, “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.”
The symposium will continue Friday at the Columbia Museum of Art and features Clyburn and his speech, “From Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement: Personal Reflections.” The symposium will conclude with a reception and tour of the Woodrow Wilson Family Home, now devoted as a museum of Reconstruction history, at 1705 Hampton St.
“South Carolina is still feeling the lasting legacy of the post-Reconstruction era,” Clyburn said. “Black leaders during Reconstruction like Congressman Robert Smalls and House Speaker Robert Brown Elliott took our state and nation in a new direction, creating public schools and social welfare institutions. But progress stopped with the enactment of Jim Crow laws. The institutionalized discrimination of that time led to our modern day problems of educational, health and income disparities that continue to plague South Carolina.”
The Reconstruction period marked the transition from slavery to freedom and citizenship for nearly four million enslaved African-Americans. It saw the enactment of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, which vastly expanded constitutional protection of citizenship rights for all Americans.
The rich history of Reconstruction was remembered and carried forward by generations of African-Americans and by scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois and others, said Patricia Sullivan, professor of history and director of the History Center at the University of South Carolina.
“It is notable that in 1946, here in Columbia, South Carolina, the Southern Negro Youth Conference sponsored a youth legislature (event) at the Township Auditorium and Benedict College, which honored the leaders of the Reconstruction era, and looked forward to fulfilling the promise of Reconstruction in the post-World War II era,” said Sullivan who specializes in African-American history and race relations. “At this meeting, W.E.B. Du Bois delivered his historic speech, ‘Behold the Land,’ calling on young people in the South to lead the movement for democracy and racial justice – a starting point of the modern civil rights movement.”
Sullivan and other event organizers are hoping the event will deepen public understanding of Reconstruction and spur new conversations on the topic as it relates to the state today.
“The history and memory of Reconstruction inspired generations of activists whose efforts culminated with the civil rights achievements of the 1950s and 1960s and remains foundational to ongoing struggles around race and democracy, citizenship and rights,” Sullivan said. “The engagement of the public in this history, through events such as this symposium, and the establishment of public markers and commemorations, is essential to recovering this vital part of our past.”
The symposium also will include a panel discussion featuring top historians from across the nation who will discuss the new directions historians are taking in their Reconstruction research and a panel that will explore the challenges and opportunities that museums, park services and public history sites face in the interpreting and presenting Reconstruction.
“For decades, mainstream histories of the era portrayed the period as a ‘tragic era’ and failed to acknowledge the achievements of Reconstruction, the leading role of African-Americans at all levels of government, and the realization of an interracial democracy, even if for a brief period,” Sullivan said. “Today, most history courses fail to acknowledge the foundational role of this era in our history and politics.”
What is Reconstruction?
From history.com:
The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of significant challenges.
Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new Southern state legislatures passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African-Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction, which began in 1867, newly enfranchised blacks gained a voice in government for the first time in American history, winning election to Southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces – including the Ku Klux Klan – would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South. The political turmoil continued.
A century later, the legacy of Reconstruction would be revived during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as African-Americans fought for the political, economic and social equality that had long been denied them.
If you go
Here, a look at some of activities scheduled as part of the Reconstruction event.
Thursday
The Significance of Reconstruction in American History with Eric Foner: 6 p.m.
The symposium will begin at 6 p.m. Thursday at the historic African-American Ladson Presbyterian Church with a keynote address by Eric Foner. Foner, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, has written about slavery, the Underground Railroad, emancipation and Abraham Lincoln. Best known for his seminal book, “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877,” Foner has been involved with efforts to expand public knowledge and understanding of the Reconstruction era and has actively supported efforts to create a Reconstruction interpretive site in Beaufort.
Friday
The Reconstruction Era: History and Public Memory Symposium
The event will continue Friday at the Columbia Museum of Art with morning and afternoon panel discussions that will feature leading historians from across the country and a special luncheon presentation by U.S. Rep. James Clyburn.
New Directions in Reconstruction History: 10 –11:30 a.m.
Panelists: Elsa Barkley Brown, associate professor of history and women’s studies, University of Maryland; Lewis Burke, professor of law, University of South Carolina; and Stacey Smith, associate professor of history, Oregon State University). Moderator: Ehren Foley, historical marker coordinator, S.C. State Historic Preservation Office.
Panelists will discuss new and recent scholarship on Reconstruction and how it informs contemporary understanding of the era and its legacy. Burke will discuss the role that black lawyers in Reconstruction era-politics played in resisting efforts to undermine the enforcement of the 14th and 15th amendments by leading South Carolinians who fought to restore white supremacy. Smith, author of “Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction,” will discuss the impact of Reconstruction in the West, focusing on black civil rights struggles. Brown will discuss her seminal work on the topic of African-American political life and culture in the transition from slavery to freedom, with a focus on gender and women.
From Reconstruction to the Civil Right Movement: Personal Reflections: Noon
Clyburn, the first African-American to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Congress since Reconstruction, will deliver the luncheon address.
Interpreting Reconstruction: Challenges and Opportunities: 1:30-3 p.m.
Panelists: Michael Allen, community partnership specialist, National Park Service; Gregory Downs associate professor of history at UC-Davis; Kate Masur, associate professor of history, Northwestern University; Jennifer Taylor, doctoral candidate of history, University of South Carolina. Moderator: Eric Foner, Columbia University.
Panelists Masur and Downs, editors of “The World the Civil War Made,” have worked with the National Park Service on a project to involve historians, staff members, state historical societies and the general public in a discussion about the best sites and methods to capture Reconstruction history. Allen is the NPS’s ground coordinator for the project. Taylor developed tours and trained guides for Historic Columbia’s Woodrow Wilson Family Home: A Museum of Reconstruction.
Reception and Tours at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home: A Museum of Reconstruction: 3:30-5 p.m.
Thomas Brown, professor of history at the University of South Carolina, will join the Historic Columbia staff to lead tours of The Woodrow Wilson Family Home: A Museum of Reconstruction, which was Wilson’s home during his teenage years. Tours and exhibits examine challenging topics that range from the meaning of citizenship to the violent overthrow of Reconstruction. Guides address the complexities of the man for whom the site is named and how his early experiences in Columbia may have shaped his policies as a U.S. president. Brown, a noted scholar of the period, worked with Historic Columbia to craft the content for the exhibits.
If you go
While the symposium is free and open to the public, the lunch costs $30 per person. Advance registration for the symposium is required as seating is limited.
For more information and registration, visit historiccolumbia.org/reconstruction.
This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 4:59 AM with the headline "Understanding the significance of Reconstruction era in SC’s history."