Welcome to the liturgist podcast.

You are now listening to Black History is American History.

I'm William Matthews.

Hey, I'm propaganda.

I'm Nikki Black.

And I'm Andra Henry.

Today's moment in Black History Reconstruction.

The Reconstruction era is the period from 1865 to 1877 following the American Civil War.

It also represents the failed transformation of the 11 former Confederate States.

Reconstruction aimed to end the remnants of Confederate succession and abolish slavery,

making the newly freed slaves, citizens with civil rights ostensibly guaranteed by three

new constitutional amendments.

Three visions of civil war memory appeared during Reconstruction.

The Reconciliationist vision, which was rooted in coping with the death and devastation

the war had brought, the White supremacist vision, which included segregation and the preservation

of the traditional cultural standards of the South, and the Emancipationist vision,

which sought full freedom, citizenship, and constitutional equality for African Americans.

When President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was assassinated at the end of the Civil War,

vice president Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee and former slaveholder, became

president.

Johnson's weak reconstruction policies prevailed until the congressional elections of 1866.

Those elections followed outbreaks of violence against blacks in former rebel states, including

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