American Experience; Interview with David W. Blight, Historian, Yale University, part 4 of 6 : Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
Description:
In the tumultuous years after the Civil War (1863-77), America grappled with how to rebuild itself, how to successfully bring the South back into the Union and how to bring former slaves into the life of the country. Blight talks about former slave John Roy Lynch in Mississippi legislature and election to Congress, elections of 1868 and racism in the Democratic party, Ulysses S. Grant is elected president, Fifteenth Amendment is ratified, counter-revolution of white southern Democrats, violence and the Ku Klux Klan, Amos Akerman and federal Ku Klux Klan hearings, Thomas Dixon and "The Clansman."
