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Make Good the Promises: Reclaiming Reconstruction and Its Legacies by Kinshasha Holman Conwill
eowyns_helmet's review
5.0
This is an outstanding compilation of text, essays, and visuals to accompany the exhibit of the same name at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The book has both a national view of post Civil War history and specific examples that bring this period allive, both in its hope and in its violence and broken promises. I especially appreciated the different approaches of the scholars called on to contribute. I think this would also be an excellent text for high school AP American and African American history. As one writer points out, White supremacy is the underlying structure that made the violence of the post-Reconstruction violence and Jim Crow possible and it's still very much with us. There's also hope in this book, that perhaps we are currently in a third "Reconstruction," where many of these issues that still haunt us can be exposed to sunlight and addressed.
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