30 May 2023: “Before assessing the accomplishments of the decade or so during which Reconstruction policy attempted to redress almost two and a half centuries of Anglo-American slavery, it is useful to revisit the sheer excitement and optimism that African Americans expressed at its demise. Our awareness of the assault on emerging black rights and the debacle to come only makes these sentiments more poignant” (Gates 20).
Working on my entry on Reconstruction today and some version of the idea Gates references keeps reemerging in my reading. Every bit of "what could have been" makes what actually happened--that still shapes us today--even more tragic.
Work Cited
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. Penguin Group USA, 2019.
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