History of Democracy Revised (Episode 7) | Reconstruction: An Unfinished Promise
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About this episode
For generations, Americans were taught that Reconstruction was a failure. But what if the history we learned was the real myth?
In this episode of Reconstruction, Malcolm Gladwell traces how influential historians helped rewrite the story of Reconstruction, turning one of the most ambitious democratic experiments in American history into a cautionary tale. Featuring conversations with Jelani Cobb, Eric Foner, and the groundbreaking work of W.E.B. Du Bois, the episode explores how history is shaped—not just by the facts we preserve, but by the stories we choose to tell.
Who gets to write history? And what happens when an entire nation builds its understanding of the past on a false narrative?
Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise is hosted by Malcolm Gladwell and Barack Obama.
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About Reconstruction: An Unfinished Promise
Reconstruction begins where, for most Americans, the story of the Civil War ends: The North is victorious and slavery is abolished. But what happened next was one of the most important decades in American history, a moment when our country grappled with its original sin and imagined — and briefly enacted — a more perfect union.
Drawing from archives, letters, diaries, court records, eyewitness testimonies and some of America’s most accomplished scholars and storytellers, Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise explores this unprecedented historical moment in rich, kaleidoscopic detail. The series unpacks a time when a determined band of reformers attempted to radically reimagine American society — from the Constitution to the roots of its economy to the very nature of citizenship itself.
Reconstruction was a time when Americans struggled over fundamental questions about our country. Who gets to be a citizen? Who has the right to vote? Who can own property? In short, who belongs? Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise explores what America might have looked…
- Posted by
- Higher Ground Productions, the YouTube channel of HIGHER GROUND PRODUCTIONS, on 2026-07-09
- Rights holder
- HIGHER GROUND PRODUCTIONS, whose own site links this channel (checked 2026-10-31)
- Length
- 29 min
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