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Speaker 1: Why reconstruction had to fail on purpose? Welcome back to It.

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Speaker 1: Als to another episode of the most anticipated podcast on

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Speaker 1: the Black Effect Podcast Network, especially in February.

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Speaker 2: Entitled I didn't know Maybe you didn't either.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host be Dots, And you know, reconstruction gets

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Speaker 1: described like a bad experiment. You know, they tried something

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Speaker 1: after slavery, it didn't work, and everybody moved on. Nah,

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Speaker 1: reconstruction didn't fail. It was dismantled. And today we're going

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Speaker 1: to reopen that case file. But first I would like

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Speaker 1: to give you three of the most useless facts you'll

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Speaker 1: never need, ever, not a day in life about reconstruction.

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Speaker 1: Number one, During reconstruction, black men were elected to Congress,

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Speaker 1: state legislators, and local offices across the South. Did you

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Speaker 1: know that your second useless fact about re construction, Black

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Speaker 1: communities built schools, businesses, newspapers, and banks in record time.

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Speaker 2: And your third useless fact.

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Speaker 1: The first two useless facts scared the absolute but Jesus

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Speaker 1: out of them racist white folk.

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Speaker 2: They used to own them, like, genuinely scared them. Do

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Speaker 2: you know why? Because I didn't I didn't know. I

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Speaker 2: didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know I didn't know.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know.

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Speaker 2: I didn't know. I didn't know, So did get.

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Speaker 1: After the Civil War, the United States had a real

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Speaker 1: choice to make either fully integrate formally enslaved people into

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Speaker 1: democracy or find a way to roll the clock back

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Speaker 1: without saying the term slavery out loud man. For about

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Speaker 1: twelve years, reconstruction actually worked. Black people voted, held office,

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Speaker 1: passed laws, built infrastructures. It was Southern States with black

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Speaker 1: governors and black senators and black judges.

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Speaker 2: Dig this story, hear them revels.

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Speaker 1: He became the first black US Senator in eighteen seventy,

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Speaker 1: and he held Jefferson Davis's former seats.

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Speaker 2: Now why was this symbolic?

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Speaker 1: Because Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy, the

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Speaker 1: actual government created to preserve slavery. Then hearum revels, a

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Speaker 1: formerly enslaved man turned minister and educator took his exact

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Speaker 1: Senate seats.

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Speaker 2: It was an ultimate reversal of power.

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Speaker 1: The man who fought to keep black people enslaved was

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Speaker 1: symbolically replaced by a black man helping write US law.

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Speaker 2: That ain't a coincidence, That's history.

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Speaker 1: Making a statement in eighteen seventy, and that's when the

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Speaker 1: backlash came. Not subtle, not accidental. Coordinated white supremacist groups

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Speaker 1: like the KKK used non stop terror to stop Black

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Speaker 1: political participation. Between eighteen sixty eight and eighteen seventy six.

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Speaker 1: They said an estimated two thousand or more Black people

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Speaker 1: were killed in Louisiana alone just for organizing politically. The

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Speaker 1: Colfax massacre of eighteen seventy three left one hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty people dead. States passed laws to suppress votes, violence

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Speaker 1: went unpunished. Federal troops were slowly pulled back. Then came

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Speaker 1: the final move. In eighteen seventy seven, political leaders struck

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Speaker 1: a deal. Federal protection for black citizens would end in

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Speaker 1: exchange for political power, and that was it. Reconstruction wasn't

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Speaker 1: abandoned because it failed. It was abandoned because it worked

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Speaker 1: too well. Black progress threatened land ownership, threatened labor control,

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Speaker 1: It threatened the entire racial hierarchy that America was built on.

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Speaker 2: So the story had to change.

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Speaker 1: Instead of saying we sabotage democracy, they said black people

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Speaker 1: just weren't ready, and that law did serious work. It

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Speaker 1: justified Jim Crows segregation, voter suppression mass incarceration, and a

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Speaker 1: century's worth of inequality, all built on the idea that

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Speaker 1: Reconstruction was a mistake. It wasn't. Letting it die was.

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Speaker 1: And this is exactly the kind of lie that Carter G.

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Speaker 1: Woodson was responding to in nineteen twenty six, one hundred

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Speaker 1: years ago. He watched Reconstruction get blamed on black people

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Speaker 1: instead of the people who destroyed it.

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Speaker 2: And Carter G. Woodson knew, if you teach.

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Speaker 1: Failure without explaining sabotage, oppression starts sounding earned. Look, Reconstruction

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Speaker 1: didn't collapse, it was pulled apart. And once you see that,

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Speaker 1: American history starts making a lot more sense.

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Speaker 2: And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either.

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Speaker 1: I