From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), a newly updated edition of the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period which shaped modern America, with a new introduction from the author. Eric Foner's "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed. Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) remains the standard work on the wrenching post-Civil War period—an era whose legacy still reverberates in the United States today.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Lynching occurred more in Mississippi than in any other state. During the 100 years after the Civil War, almost one in every ten lynchings in the United States took place in Mississippi. As in other Southern states, these brutal murders were carried out primarily by white mobs against black victims. The complicity of communities and courts ensured that few of the more than 500 lynchings in Mississippi resulted in criminal convictions. This book studies lynching in Mississippi from the Civil War through the civil rights movement. It examines how the crime unfolded in the state and assesses the large number of deaths, the reasons, the distribution by counties, cities and rural locations, and public responses to these crimes. The final chapter covers lynching's legacy in the decades since 1965; an appendix offers a chronology.

Traces how the Republican Party in the South after Reconstruction transformed from a biracial organization to a mostly all-white one.

This pioneering work brings together for the first time in a single reference work all of the extant, fugitive, and recently discovered registration data on African American voters from Colonial America to the present. It features election returns for African American presidential, senatorial, congressional, and gubernatorial candidates over time. Rich, insightful narrative explains the data and traces the history of the laws dealing with the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of African Americans. Topics covered include: - The contributions of statistical pioneers including Monroe Work, W.E.B. DuBois and Ralph Bunche - African American organizations, like the NAACP and National Equal Rights League (NERL) - Pioneering African American officeholders, including the few before the Civil War - Four influxes of African American voters: Reconstruction (Southern African American men), the Fifteenth Amendment (African American men across the country), the Nineteenth Amendment (African American female voters in 1920 election), and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - The historical development of disenfranchisement in the South and the statistical impact of the tools of disenfranchisement: literacy clauses, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses. The African-American Electorate features more than 300 tables, 150 figures, and 50 maps, many of which have been created exclusively for this work using demographic, voter registration, election return, and racial precinct data that have never been collected and assembled for the public. An appendix includes popular and electoral voting data for African-American presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial candidates, and a comprehensive bibliography indicates major topic areas and eras concerning the African-American electorate. The African American Electorate offers students and researchers the opportunity, for the first time, to explore the relationship between voters and political candidates, identify critical variables, and situate African Americans' voting behavior and political phenomena in the context of America's political history.

Black Political Mobilization accounts for the political success of black Americans in the South. Minion Morrison returns to Mississippi, the center of much of the political activism of the 1960s, to analyze the remarkable improvement in black electoral participation in the years following passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mississippi's substantial black population has experienced marked electoral success despite a history of strict racial exclusion. The dramatic and widespread nature of mobilization there makes it one of the most illustrative case studies for exploring this period of political change in America. Mississippi represents a broader phenomenon of political change that sustains a new leadership class in the Southern region. Three rural Mississippi towns serve as the focal point for the study. They each have a population of under 2,000, have overwhelming Afro-American voting majorities, are poor and largely agricultural, have been affected by the civil rights movement of the '60s, and have elected a black mayor since 1973. The towns are prime examples of the character and process of minority electoral politics and mobilization in the rural South: A new class of black leaders is nurtured and installed in office in an environment where a newly and highly mobilized constituency takes advantage of its majority status in the electorate. This book combines good theory with lively interviews and rich case histories to highlight an essentially new variety of participatory democracy in American politics and government.