Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner

Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction Reviews

• 
  Donald Powell

  Eric Foner is the preeminent historian on the United States period known as "Reconstruction". This is a very moving book for a history book of facts, dates and names. There are five sections by another author using visual communications to exhibit and elucidate the main text. There are huge and important lessons to learn from this failed period of history. Everyone shares the blame and everyone should contribute to the correction of these horrible errors which date to this country's founding. We need to finally try to get over the Civil War in a true, meaningful, honest battle against racism, inequality and injustice. This book is a great foundation for using history to learn.
• 
  Greg

  RECOMMENDED!
  
  I read this book (Forever Free) just as I was completing the volume on the Civil War and Reconstruction by Page Smith (Trial by Fire: A People's History of the Civil War and Reconstruction). Mr. Foner's book is a much shorter read, but both he and Mr. Smith are primary source historians, which means that we who read them "hear" from hundreds of real people whom previous histories have often totally ignored.
  
  Mr. Foner, who is my age, refers to the Civil Rights Movement of the '50s and '60s of the 20th Century as the "Second Period of Reconstruction," as it was a revivified struggle of black people -- and their white allies -- for the fulfillment of promises of justice and equality to the black people made by both Lincoln and the Congress in the wake of the Civil War. While the US Congress in the '60s did pass additional civil rights legislation, the legal and ethical thrust of the renewed demands for equality were founded on the laws and constitutional amendments passed by the Congress -- and ratified by the states -- in the wake of the Civil War.
  
  Mr. Foner also characterizes the period from the 1970s to our own time as "the second retreat from Reconstruction." With the recent conclusion of the trial of the man who killed young Trayvon Martin -- and much of the "talk" posted by people commenting about it -- I think we can get a fresh understanding of how deeply issues of race -- and, indeed, the continuing existence of racism itself -- continues to haunt the United States. Just as in the 19th century, white people still struggle to put themselves into the shoes of black people; too many of us still tend to dismiss black peoples' accounts of how life in the US "is" as either the perspective of a very small portion of blacks, or as the words of people who "do not appreciate how far they have come" or as coming from "troublemakers."
  
  Just as war-weary Americans after 1865 hungered for a quick return to "normalcy," even if that meant the return to power in the South of the very kinds of people -- in some instances, some of the actual instigators -- who supported slavery and secession, so also in our own time many whites apparently are "tired of" hearing about the "unfounded -- or distorted" complaints of black people about continuing evidence of racism. If this strikes you as an overstatement, just ponder for a few moments the reality of Republican attempts in so many states to make voting more difficult. Oh, I know that this is being sold as an "attack on fraud," as a way of "keeping sacred and untarnished the right to vote," but this is simply hogwash or, speaking more plainly, bullshit. What is really going on is EXACTLY like what happened in the 1870s and 1880s -- resistance by the white power structure, supported by non-elite whites who nonetheless share the mythos of their leaders, to letting non-whites have a truly equal right to rule, to govern.
  
  I still remember how my earliest history books treated the Reconstruction Era as a failed experiment -- NOT because the United States failed to keep its promises to the former slaves (and to blacks who had never been slaves in the North), but because the Radical Republican leftists (a denomination I doubt we will ever see again in our lifetimes) imposed on the long-suffering people of the South Reconstruction governments filled with incompetent and ill-educated blacks (and their white supporters from the North). The result was discrimination against white people and widespread corruption. Or so I once was taught, almost 100 years after the Civil War!
  
  The truth -- as both Mr. Foner and Mr. Smith demonstrate in factual detail -- is that most of the Reconstruction governments, while having a portion of freely elected black people for the first time, were majority white in composition. Further, most of the black people elected by a combination of blacks and whites (the whites were not imports from the North, by and large but, rather, native Southerners who had not been part of, or tied into, the economic, cultural and political network of the plantation aristocracy and who resented the social distortions that group had visited upon themselves. The black people elected consisted of many who were well-educated, drawing their number from the black churches and black schools (most of the schools existed in the North or in border states). Yes, there were some delegates -- white as well as black -- who were less educated, and some who participated in some form of graft. However, however deplorable such corruption truly is, it hardly emerged in whole cloth just during the Reconstruction era, or just in the South. Anyone somewhat acquainted with American history will recall the ongoing efforts in the 19th Century by reformers to clean up the patronage system, whereby elected officials appointed their supporters to important government posts. This system antedated the Civil War and existed in all parts of the country. Much of the outcry against "corruption," therefore, came from those whites who, after the Civil War, had been ousted from positions of power and now found themselves governed by the formerly dispossessed whites and blacks.
  
  The major reason I believe you would profit from reading at least one of these books is to better understand how the "problem of race, and consequent racism" is at the center of American life and is STILL unresolved. It remains something which we prefer not to confront and seldom to discuss. From Thomas Jefferson on, our greatest leaders have recognized that until this issue was "solved," it would remain a cancer eating away at our culture, always refuting the claims of "equal rights and justice to all" enshrouded in America's belief system about itself.
  
  One last point: America's greatest black leaders -- and there have been many, but I am thinking now especially of Frederick Douglas, W.E. DuBois, and Martin Luther King -- ALL connected racial tensions and racism itself to the larger economic-political order. Let me cite just one example in the hopes of clarifying this: It is undoubtedly true that blacks constitution a disproportional ratio of persons imprisoned in the United States. Now, one way of evaluating this fact is that "blacks are more prone to violence and the breaking of laws." Another -- and that which is much more insightful -- would lead us to ask a deeper "why"? Which laws, or what kind of violence, for instance, are behind convicted black persons? Is it possible that the majority white society has targeted certain behaviors as particularly deserving punishment when the participation in these behaviors is, perhaps, culturally or economically more likely? From what familial and educational conditions do imprisoned blacks come? Are there patterns here that may be linked to the behavior of all people exposed to, or subject to similar limitations, of like conditions?
  
  My ancestors came from Ireland just before the Civil War. As an American historian, I know that they, too, were treated with suspicion and often contempt just because of their looks, language, educational status,and so-on. But, unlike black people, in a generation or two they could "look" just like the rest of white America. But no matter how much black people know as much, or behave as similarly, as white people, we can still "see" that they are not whites. And THAT is the issue.
  
  We desperately need an ongoing national discussion about race. Like all put-off conversations (think of some hot issues which you have avoided in your marriage or other kind of long term relationship), I would not be surprised if initially there will be considerable tension, anger, and misunderstanding. However, if we could summon the will to persist -- anchoring our commitment to "the better angels of our nature," as Lincoln put it -- we WILL experience "break through"and genuine sharing, learning, and joint commitments will follow.
  
  The truly good news is that liberating ourselves from racial hang-ups -- attempting to see as the Holy One sees: the being within the skin -- both whites and blacks will be freer people. The same ghosts of chains still hampering blacks also entangle the feet and minds of whites; breaking those chains for good ends the horrible vortex begun when this country -- long before its break with Great Britain -- imported the damnable practice of black chattel slavery. In the words of the ancient prophets: We have greatly sinned! And, without equal repentance (which consists of both genuine awareness AND a commitment to change behavior), we will not find the will to act and break free.
  
  May we yet find a way to do so!
  
  Greg
  
• 
  Tim

  After watching the Ken Burns Civil War series, I felt I had to tackle a gap in my history - what happened after the end of the Civil War, Lincoln's assassination, and the newly freed black population.
  
  Forever Free: was a great, readable, reflection. It delved into the 14, 15, 16th Amendments, the meaning of freedom as viewed by the former slaves, the elite white southern planters, and the various views of Northerners.
  
  Racism did not die, it reformed in the emergence of the KKK, and institutionalized in the Jim Crow system that ran clear till the 1950s. It never left us as Americans subdued the Western Indians, and discriminated against the Asians on the West Coast. As MLK Jr observed in the 60's, it is one of the great American issues - an evil still to be subdued.
  
  But the book made it clear that the former slaves were not beaten down, the vision of freedom, of suffrage, the economic strive for land and property were at times set back, but never let go.
  
  This book, of all so far in this election of 2008, emphasizes the route our nation has traveled to date - where Obama is one of two major contenders for the Presidency. As he said today, on Father's Day, June 15, "pray for me, pray for Michelle."
• 
  Sarah

  If you are trying to decide whether this is a good book on Reconstruction History - the answer is yes. Check the book out at a library or purchase it. It is well-written and understandable. This book walks the reader through the time period around 1863 to the end of Reconstruction and into the early 1900's - but focuses on the 12 year period from 1865-1877. It seemed that what has been missing in my own knowledge is why Reconstruction fell apart- what happened in both the social and political worlds. I feel fortunate that my google searches brought this book up as a recommendation.
  
  Early on in the book I highlighted the following because I believe it, and see it more and more as I age: "History does not merely refer to the past...history is literally present in all we do." I think it's as true for an individual as it is for an institution. For African Americans this history is central to where we are today as Black Lives Matter has once again renewed the fight for racial justice.
  
  One of the first things that a modern reader has to remember is that the political ideologies of the Republican and Democratic parties flipped over time. In the age of Reconstruction the South was mostly Democratic voters which represented the Conservative voice and by-and-large the party was filled with whites who were angry that their way of life had ended. It was the Republican party for which black voters turned to for support. Within the Republican party, it was the Radical Republicans who had the clearest vision to help freed slaves have an opportunity to achieve as whites did - that which was promised in the Constitution of life, liberty and justice under the law. Unfortunately the Republican Party would not listen to the smaller contingency of the liberal thinking of the Radicals on how to achieve and continue their full entry into economic and politcal life after slavery. Eventually a severe economic depression took hold after the war years and the promises eroded. Despite the Civil Rights Bill of the time, along with the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constituion, the promises of Reconstruction only lasted for approx. 12 years in earnest. The Federal Government failed to continue its support, and once the Federal Government failed to protect black citizens, the white citizens of the south set out to make the amendments null and void. Not only did the Federal Government remove necessary protections, the Supreme Court ruled in cases brought before it that caused even more harm.
  
  The first thing that Southern politicians did was to drastically scale back the scope and responsibilities of government - state budgets were slashed along with slashing taxes and levies on landed property and in general diminished spending on schools, hospitals, and other social services - all decimated, along with an increase in patriarchal authority - gains in women's rights were reversed. And then of course, the Southern politicians set about increasing penalties for petty crimes which targeted black men and sent them to prison for minor offenses and turned prisons into a lucrative business for free labor, and blacks were kept poor by confining them to agricultural work or menial jobs in cities. Sound familiar?
  
  In this book written in 2005, the author speaks of the Reconstruction Era, then the Second era of change during the Civil Rights period of the 1960s, knowing that much was still left unaccomplished as far a federal laws and societal attitudes. So we can see that 100 years from the Emancipation Proclamation to the 1960s, little had changed to give full and equal treatment to the black community especially in the South. The North wasn't a perfect paradise by any means, but blacks could at least vote. The Jim Crow era kept the black community in a segregated and virtually powerless position. This was made possible of course by incredible violence - whether one-on-one intimidation or outright white mob-violence on blacks and made possible through the control of white power in politics.
  
  An interesting addition in this book was a Virtual Essay that was found between various chapters. The visual imagery of black life - whether through painted scenes or the development of photography, along with how cartoons and animation, or through mass distribution of newspapers - highlighted the racial stereotypes being used against the African American population over time. Interestingly, one of these essays discussed how, through the growth of print media, advertisements developed with the images of blacks on products such as Cream of Wheat and Aunt Jemina. Just in the last few weeks have the owners of these brands vowed to end them. It has taken another 60 years since the Civil Rights era to deal with ridding the visuals of racist stereotypes to BLM, as well as dealing with the multitude of monuments in the public square that need to come down and be moved to a history museum where the context of how and why they were displayed can be understood.
  
  There is so much more - and my own personal knowledge has increased greatly - so much so that I'm struggling to distill it into a succinct review. For me, I understand now how things that we see as some sort of normal political discourse, is in all actuality arguments that arose in the 1800's. The argument over how much control the Federal Government should have versus the individual States is one of these. Conservatives consistently want state's rights to dominate. Liberals see the need for Federal oversight.
  
  As an example from the book to demonstrate the continual line of beliefs passed down, let me give you one from around 1890. In it, we have the white conservatives (at the time the Dems and people from the South predominately) saying there is the "Negro Question" - that is: that the problem of blacks was that they were "deficient" in their personal conduct and character, and that self-help, not national assistance or political agitation, offered the best route to racial progress. How many times do we hear that even today by whites? I liked the response shared by the author from an Abolitionist Judge Albion W. Tourgee: "they should also discuss the "white problem" since the hate, the oppression, the injustice, are all on our side."
  
  Read this book to help you understand just how ready, willing and able the freedmen and freed slaves were in America to step forward after the Civil War ended, and to lead in the communities. Many black men were elected into various political offices and assumed various other positions of leadership. The black community was formed along family and church, and in fact many political leaders (just like MLKjr) came from the religious community. Black women also wanted to contribute, but of course women still could not vote. There was not a public school system in the south prior to the Civil War, but after the war education became a matter that took precedence and we find the formation of the public school system with blacks sending their children to learn and black colleges operating. Black owned businesses grew as well. What the African American community should have gotten was land at the end of the war. But that wasn't to be.
  
  In the epilogue, Foner writes about economic injustice. He reminds us that Reconstruction failed to address adequately the economic legacy of slavery and the Second Reconstruction (1960s) found it difficult to attack the economic consequences of a century of segregation and economic and political disempowerment. Inequalities in employment, education, and housing was left intact. I think its important to also mention the inequities in our criminal justice system because what we have witnessed over the last several months of black men being killed on the streets by police, and what we know about the prison and court system inequities as reported in books such as Just Mercy - we can see that there is still much more that needs to be changed. How is that to happen? We need a strong response from Washington - we need a Federal Government that upholds the Constititution of the United States of America and that grants us ALL life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
• 
  Christopher Saunders

  A pared-down version of previous Foner books, with interesting photo essays by Brown. Foner's central thesis is that Reconstruction was America's greatest, if not only chance to achieve racial equality. Its failure, he argues, prevented the post-Civil War wounds from healing. Foner demolishes the Dunning School of lazy blacks and crooked Republicans ruining the South: instead, he depicts biracial Republican rule as efficient, despite constant violence and intimidation by racist Democrats. Foner's leftism results in some odd analyses, for instance arguing that redistribution of plantation land was the government's best hope for success. While critical of Presidents Grant and Hayes for loosening the reins on Southern segregation, he doesn't suggest how Reconstruction could have been better enforced. Would a perpetual military occupation of the ex-Confederacy been sustainable, let alone desirable? A very valuable book regardless.
• 
  Kathleen

  The author, Eric Foner, is a noted historian on Reconstruction . For many years, the Reconstruction era has been widely misunderstood, especially the role played by former slaves in building a new life for themselves. Mr Foner sets the record straight by explaining Presidential and Radical Reconstruction and the incomplete promise of Reconstruction. He presents the perspective of white plantation owners and leaders, other white Southerners, freedmen and women, and Northerners. Interspersed are chapters of "visual essays, which illustrate culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The illustrations, which appeared in newspapers and magazines at the time, add significantly to the narrative. The Reconstruction era is one of the saddest in American history for the cruel and long lasting failure to secure the rights of four million former slaves.
• 
  Bart Thanhauser

  I was worried that this book, just 230 pages with lots of photos and with an introduction that describes itself as “an accessible narrative”, would be too “light” for what I wanted. More a book meant to accompany a television series than a history book in its own right. That was hardly the case. Concisely written, powerfully presented, this was worth the read.
  
  In lucid prose and careful (though not overwhelming) detail, this book describes a portion of U.S. history I knew nothing about. Though “long shunted to an obscure backwater of national memory” (237), the Reconstruction was a fascinating decade of history for its grand aspirations of interracial democracy (if not equality), and the violence, suppression, and disenfranchisement that followed it (in the poorly termed “Redemption” era). The latter is a story most Americans should be familiar with. But it’s the remarkable progress of "Radical" Reconstruction that I found eye opening—just three years after the 13th amendment abolished slavery, there was black suffrage and more black U.S. senators than there would be for most of the next 150 years; there’s the establishment of public education systems in many southern states; and there’s a push for land reform (and redistribution) among formerly enslaved blacks, cognizant that economic equality was a key plank for racial equality.
  
  I also found it interesting how the racist and inept “Presidential Reconstruction” era, charted by Andrew Johnson, helped galvanize the creative energy of Radical Republicans (Thaddeus Stevens looms large) to push more aggressively towards progress. With Trump’s disastrous and regressive leadership today that feels resonant (though maybe too optimistic). And the way that the brief triumph of Radical Republicanism was followed by fatigue among Liberal Republicans and backlash among Southern Democrats is interesting too. Perhaps it’s clumsy and simplistic, but it feels that there are plenty of historical lessons applicable to today.
  
  Foner dips into the Civil War too (since it shaped the Reconstruction that followed), and I found this portion of history interesting too, in part because there’s just so much I didn’t know. For example, Foner details how Lincoln held some regressive/racist views at the beginning of the war; initially he was a proponent of the idea of “colonization,” i.e., the push to free enslaved blacks and then have all blacks leave the United States (for Liberia or the Carribean) since an interracial society was impossible (or undesirable). Lincoln’s views on race would change during the war, and Foner argues that seeing blacks fight for the Union helped change his perspective and recognize that the institution of slavery was the key reason for the war. I also never knew that Lincoln was at first adamant that the Civil War was about preserving the Union, and accordingly endeavored to attract Union-friendly southerners to his side. For example, he chose Andrew Johnson as his VP, in part, because he was the only senator from a confederate state to declare loyalty to the Union. And how did I not know that there were states in the Union that allowed slavery? Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri.
  
  Foner is a thoughtful writer and he spends a lot of time looking at the historical writings and voices of blacks in the Reconstruction. Still, this book was published in 2005, and if this book gets a reprint, I hope Foner would update some of his word choices (e.g., enslaved blacks rather than "slaves," enslavers instead "masters.") I also wanted more detail in sections. I know Foner has a 700+ page tome on the Reconstruction, so maybe I should just move onto that, but I would have liked more on Reconstruction's downfall. Foner's description of the shift from Republican control of the South to Democrats seizing control (sometimes forcefully) of statehouses felt rushed.
  
  The book is also interspersed with “visual essays”—photos and artistic prints of the era and accompanying passages from Joshua Brown—that further deepened the book for me. Like Foner, Brown is an adept writer and he effectively shows how these images shaped sentiment in the era.
  
  I read this book with the goal of trying to educate myself more about racial inequality and structural racism today. Better understanding U.S. history and the Reconstruction era in particular (a "brief flowering of equality in the war’s immediate aftermath” (xii)) seemed important to that. Still, I am cognizant that simply reading history books is maybe be too easy. It’s looking back; it’s primarily focused on the evils of the South (of which there were many, though the North was far from a bastion of equality); it allows me to feel “equipped” with facts and go on pedantic rants to my friends and family rather than reflect. Maybe it doesn’t challenge enough. Maybe. But this book truly feels well done. It provides an introduction to a historical era that should be taught more. And it is deeply relevant to America in 2020. I am thankful I read it.
• 
  ☯Emily Ginder

  What do you know about Reconstruction? I mean, what do you REALLY know? Do you think it was a terribly corrupt period run by totally ignorant blacks and greedy whites from the North? If so, you are still immersed in the false narrative produced by the South in the late 1900's in order to tear down the new society where blacks were free and equal.
  
  I was surprised by how much was accomplished during this short time period and how quickly it was destroyed by the South (with the help of the North.) However, much of the laws that were enacted then were used 100 years later in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. Just like the first Reconstruction, we are moving away from the laws of the Civil Rights movement with increased measures to restrict voting and increased racist speech.
  
  This is one time period that is generally ignored in American History classes, but terribly important in understanding race relations in the USA today.
• 
  Essence Taylor

  Like many other non-fiction books, "Forever Free" took me months to finish. Not because it wasn't good or I wasn't interested, I wanted to take time to thoroughly read to gain an understanding of an era that wasn't taught to me in school.
  
  That being said, I've learned more from this 400+ page book ,than any of my history classes in school.
  
  I would recommend for a basic, 1st step understanding of Reconstruction.
• 
  Kathleen

  "What is freedom? Is it the bare privilege of not being chained? If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion." -Congressman James Garfield, 1865. I wanted to read this book because I knew very little about one of the most significant and radical time periods in our history: Reconstruction. I learned in school about carpetbaggers and scalawags, and that freed slaves were promised but did not receive 40 acres and a mule. I learned very little else about Reconstruction.
  
  But this was the time period in which the most important Amendments to the Constitution were drafted, debated, and passed, especially the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal citizenship to all Americans. African Americans went from being enslaved or at best, free blacks with no rights of citizenship, to full citizens, with some even becoming United States Senators and Representatives, within the space of a few years. The federal government took on an activist role to secure the liberties of newly-freed blacks, and the Republican governments of the South in the Reconstruction era funded universal public school education, passed fairer labor laws, and sought equal treatment of blacks in public life. Their successes were remarkable, and are too little remembered in our public consciousness and our history books (most notably because of a successful early twentieth century campaign based in racism to define the era as one of rampant political corruption).
  
  Of course, the successes of Reconstruction were soon to be rolled back after Reconstruction ended in 1877. In their place came Jim Crow, severe voting rights restrictions, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings. Reading this book inevitably led me to think about what might have been if Reconstruction had continued for a generation or more--if our national commitment to equal rights did not fade away. What would our country look like today? How would the South Carolina I grew up in be altered if the push for equal rights and racial justice had not been delayed for another century following the Civil War? Would my high school still have been named for Confederate general Wade Hampton, who became governor of South Carolina immediately after Reconstruction through a campaign of violence in which his supporters deprived African Americans of their right to vote? Who might we have honored in his place?
  
  Foner's book is remarkable and fascinating, and is well-sourced and easy to read. I am so glad it was recommended to me, and I would definitely recommend it to others.
• 
  Dennis

  The historical representation of Reconstruction has, from the outset, been a site of ideological struggle, not only for truth, but for social justice. Foner's excellent book debunks myths about the Reconstruction. If you still believe that the post-Civil War south was invaded by Carpetbaggers and Scalawags, then you need to read this book. Using lithographs and other visual artifacts from the era, Foner and Joshua Brown demonstrate the role that representation plays in American attitudes toward race, states rights, and—in our own era—affirmative action.
  
  The civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s can, perhaps, best be seen as a second Reconstruction. The first attempt at instituting social justice in the U.S., a century earlier, failed. Out of the failure of Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws and lynchings shore up white privilege and ensure that the post-Civil War south doesn't truly have to change.
  
  This book is important because it details how the legacy of Reconstruction is present today in our current political and ideological battles about the “proper” role of government.
  
• 
  Mephistia

  This was a truly fantastic and in-depth chronicle of the primary aspects of the Reconstruction. He looks at Lincoln's shifting stance through his electoral run, presidency, and assassination. He touches on Lincoln's probable Reconstruction plans. He moves on to the effect of Johnsons' Reconstruction plan, the reaction of moderate Republicans in supporting the Radial Republican policies in light of Johnson's leniency toward the treasonous Confederate brass, the Southern intransigence and the eventual abandonment of Reconstruction. Each chapter is followed by a visual essay, each of which examine the role of visual media in shaping national understanding and opinion of abolition, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow.
  
  I highly recommend this as an accessible, interesting, and engaging scholarly read.
• 
  Micah

  Fantastic book. Perhaps this is obvious to those who are already familiar with the history of Reconstruction, but Forever Free really hit home the point for me that you can't understand the 20th century civil rights movement without understanding what happened—and did not happen—during Reconstruction. Also, the structure of this book, with longer chapters of straight history by Foner split up by short essays by Joshua Brown on the visual culture of the Civil War/Reconstruction era and how that impacted the larger society (along with a number of visuals), is fantastic.
• 
  Lesley

  Taught me more about the Civil War, Reconstruction, an the significance of the 14th and 15th amendments than I learned in years of school. If you think you know what Reconstruction was about, you are probably wrong.
• 
  Tim McLean

  A Must Read!
  
  Provides a crucial point of view on an often misrepresented segment of this country's history. To understand what occurred before during and after Reconstruction, is to gain a better understanding of the racial unrest this country is currently facing.
• 
  Selma Bouledjouidja

  Very well-written.
  Most interesting book I've ever studied in class.
• 
  Cornmaven

  After seeing Henry Gates' two part presentation of Reconstruction on PBS, and realizing I only learned 3 things about it in school (it failed, carpetbaggers, and scalawags), I decided to delve into this topic with one of the premier historians of the era, also featured in Gates' episodes.
  
  Foner has written extensively on Reconstruction; he's a go to for accurate information. I think this book would be a great start for those wishing to learn more, and learn the truth. There are six chapters, beginning with Emancipation and ending with post-Reconstruction results. Each chapter also includes an essay regarding the images people at the time would have seen in relation to that subject - photographs, editorial cartoons, film, and more.
  
  This is a very powerful way to begin to tell the story - the two 19th century Reconstruction periods: Andrew Johnson's version and the version created by the Radical Republicans aligned with Thaddeus Stevens. The latter was the more successful and resulted in the beginnings of integration, voting rights, and actual representation by and for the black community in the political and business arenas.
  
  Which of course gave rise to a concerted effort by white supremacists to tear it all down. Foner covers the "Lost Cause" and how it made its way into Southern textbooks, the rise and evolution of the KKK, the battle between white slaveholders and union sympathizing white farmers, Sherman's efforts to provide land to the emancipated and how it got taken away, the whole nine yards. It's hopeful at times, but in the end enraging, to me, that all the efforts were smashed, racism grew and became entrenched during the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and it took until the 1960s to begin another era of Reconstruction with MLK, Jr leading.
  
  And then we see whatever gains we made in the 1960s being undone, opposed, and equally smashed today.
  
  I think this would be an excellent choice for a non-fiction book club to tackle. Foner's other books are longer, and the visual component of this one can be visceral, which helps the reader understand why Black Lives Matter is critical for our country's survival and why the black community is saying what it is saying.
• 
  Lisa McDougald

  The Civil War and its aftermath is one of the most manipulated and misunderstood segments in American history. In Forever Free, we learn how the events after the Civil War threatened to derail the important work of Reconstruction. It wasn’t enough to just end slavery, it was the nations’ duty to ensure the new freedmen had the resources and institutions set up to actually survive in the American economy.
  
  In less than a decade of reconstruction efforts—northern capitalists, eager to develop the southern economy coupled with the shifting cycles of politics, and a white nation ignorant to the transitional needs and realities of the newly freed slaves—ultimately, shut down the promises of Reconstruction, a fact that impacts the world we live in today.
  
  In the 20th century, the American people would witness the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow segregation, and endure the promotion of white supremacy and slavery as ‘the Lost Cause’ romanticized in literature and films like “The Birth of a Nation” and “Gone With the Wind”.
  
  After Lincoln’s assassination, the battle moved to Congress against Vice President Andrew Johnson’s contradictory policies, and we are reminded of the great achievement of ending slavery and the challenges of a reluctant nation. We read little known stories of brave African Americans who fought, organized, and proactively took part in their own transition as freedmen.
  
  And, ultimately, the origins of the Civil War are discussed and answered:
  —The South ceded from the North because the Northern states chose to be non-slaveholding states, disrupting the balance of power.
  —To save the Union, Lincoln declared war on the Confederate South.
  —The Union could not win without ending slavery.
  
  “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
  — Excerpt from letter to the New York Tribune by President Lincoln-Aug. 22, 1862
  
  
• 
  John

  This was kind of perfect. I picked it up because I need to work on my Reconstruction lecture, but honestly this is great for anyone who feels like they need to know more about the era. Foner wrote THE book on Reconstruction, but that book was really long and academic. So then he wrote an abridged version of that book. And then he wrote this book. This is nice and short and so readable. It seems like the perfect distillation of his scholarship. And there is a great bonus - instead of just having illustrations, there are these little illustrated essays by another historian, Joshua Brown, that go into how images don't just reflect history, but contribute to historical change. I honestly thought the little mini, illustration essays were going to be annoying, popping up every now and then in the book, but they really work.
  Foner also does a great job in the last couple of chapters bringing everything forward to the 2nd Reconstruction of the 50s and 60s (Civil Rights Era), and the 2nd Redemption (conservative backlash, Nixon's southern strategy, etc). I feel like I could recommend this to many audiences, and even give chapters to undergrads to read.
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  Joe Rodeck

  *Forever Free* is an oddly sunny title. The history of Reconstruction is messy and miserable. In the post-civil war period we needed the best leadership, but instead there was a sequence of our worst presidents which led to corruption and eventually a crippling economic depression.
  
  This lesser examined US history explains that things were worst for blacks after the flop of Reconstruction, the light at the end of the tunnel not glimpsed until WWII.
  
  Lots of pictures. Eric Foner includes visual essays in a novel approach to Americana cultural renderings. He deserves much credit for writing a book that opens up the truth about our embarrassing past--rather glossed over in all the histories I've read.
  
  "Between 1880 and 1968, nearly 3,500 persons were lynched in the United States . . . some secretly at night; others were advertised in advance and attracted huge audiences of onlookers."
  
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  Phi Beta Kappa Authors

  Eric Foner
  ΦBK, Columbia University, 1963
  Author
  
  From the publisher: From one of our most distinguished historians comes a groundbreaking new examination of the myths and realities of the period after the Civil War.
  
  Drawing on a wide range of long-neglected documents, Eric Foner places a new emphasis on black experiences and roles during the era. We see African Americans as active agents in overthrowing slavery, in shaping Reconstruction, and creating a legacy long obscured and misunderstood. He compellingly refutes long-standing misconceptions of Reconstruction, and shows how the failures of the time sowed the seeds of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s. Richly illustrated and movingly written, this is an illuminating and essential addition to our understanding of this momentous era.
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  Michael Boyte

  Interesting little intro to reconstruction. I think it was originally out together to accompany a TV Show? It’s Foner’s really well done history pared with some really interesting essay about the visual art of the era, some of which is really hard to look at.
  
  Foner does a really great job giving a broad historic overview, particularly excoriating the common historic explanations for ending reconstruction, and giving emphasis to the political action and organizing among black people themselves.
  
  It’s clear from this book that unfinished reconstruction and the reemergence of a white supremacist power structure put the US on the road to Jim Crow and the current apartheid like state of mass incarcerations
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  Anne Mc

  A history of Reconstruction which focuses on the experience of Black Americans. It begins with the origins of slavery and extends to the Civil Rights Era and today, but the main focus is Reconstruction. It provides a nice explanation of the generally untold contributions and experiences of the newly freed (and African-Americans born free). It also includes a series of visual essays demonstrating the messages and power of images of African-Americans throughout history. The text gets a bit bogged down toward the end as he describes similar events and ideas multiple times. However, it is readable, understandable, and a powerful explanation of an often-overlooked period.
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  Tom Darrow

  A very good summary of the events of Reconstruction. Very useful for advanced high school and early college history majors. The chapters are all on logical parts of the era and Foner does an excellent job of providing enough background to give context but not so much detail that the reader gets bogged down. This is only a 200 page intro to Reconstruction, after all.
  
  The visual essays that fill out the remainder of the book are somewhat hit and miss. Some fit very well with the text and are somewhat thought=provoking, while others point out some rather obvious aspects of Reconstruction.
  
  Overall, worth the read for anyone who hasn't read much about this era.
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  Paul

  Re-thinking and discovering the history of Reconstruction is essential to an understanding of the challenges of inequality, inequity, political violence, state power, and institutionalized racism of today. We keep fighting the same battle over and over and evil keeps the upper hand but there’s hope that good people keep fighting the good fight despite the seemingly hopelessness of ever winning. It’s depressing.
  
  "In June 1963, with demonstrations sweeping the country (in one week, more than fifteen thousand Americans were arrested in 186 cities) and the violence unleashed against black protesters in Birmingham..."