Led by: Prof. Kermit Roosevelt III (University of Pennsylvania)
Course Number: AMHI 646
Semesters: Summer 2024
Image: Engraving of five African American members of Congress, ca. 1870 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC09746)
Reconstruction and Resistance
Reconstruction and Resistance: Constructing a Nation
Course Description
Reconstruction is a neglected period in American education. This is not because it is unimportant—this course will make the case that it is perhaps the most important era in terms of the creation of modern America—but because it is divisive and contested. Resistance to Reconstruction began immediately, never ceased, and has over the years been quite successful. There is resistance to the ideals of Reconstruction, and there is resistance to the teaching of Reconstruction. This course will place Reconstruction and the resistance to it in historical context, illuminating how Reconstruction broke from America’s past, how its radicalism was undermined and its promise beaten down, and how the struggles of that era continue today.
Lecture Preview
Lecture 1: “Introduction: The Civil War and Its Consequences”
About the Scholar
Kermit Roosevelt III, David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice, University of Pennsylvania
Kermit Roosevelt III is a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, and an award-winning author. A frequent op-ed contributor and media expert, his work has appeared in the New York Times, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Washington Times, TIME, Newsweek, and The Hill, among many other outlets. Roosevelt is a board member of the Theodore Roosevelt Library and Museum Foundation, the US Presidential Scholars Foundation, and the National Constitution Center’s Coalition of Freedom. He is a distinguished research fellow of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the American Law Institute.
The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.