The Civil War ends. Four million people are free. And the question becomes: Now what?

Here’s what. Newly freed Black Americans do not wait for permission. They register to vote. They build schools. They run for office. But they don’t do it alone. Poor white farmers and laborers join them. Black and white working-people begin voting together. Out of the darkness, a spark. And sparks make some people nervous.

Between 1865 and 1877, more than 2,000 Black men are elected to public office. As sheriffs. Legislators. Congressmen. State governments rewrite laws. Public school systems are born. Multiracial democracy is not theory. It is happening. Union General Sherman sets aside coastal land for formerly enslaved families. Forty acres – a foundation. A reparation.

Then comes the backlash. White supremacy will have it’s way. Enter the Klan. Guns and night rides. Beatings. Lynchings. The message is simple, and brutal: Blacks and whites shall not align in this democracy. Freed Blacks will be punished. Intimidated. The new President steps in and denies any reparations. Land is returned to plantation owners. Poverty replaces promise. Sharecropping replaces ownership. The Black Americans who built so much of the wealth in this country will get none of it.

To win the presidency in 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes agrees to The Compromise of 1877. Federal troops are pulled out of the South, and Reconstruction officially ends. Without federal protection, white supremacist state governments take control and 100 years of Jim Crow begins. Political wins by Black Americans are followed by terror, and inequality is hardened in every corner of this country – “legal” segregation; disenfranchisement as policy. Whatever freedmen and women build is torn down. Violence reigns.

Reconstruction WAS NOT chaos. It was democracy expanding, and the backlash was white America’s fist, tightening. This drum still beats. The fight for democracy remains, and attempts to quash the voices of Black Americans continues today. We know that democracy can grow. And when it has, those sparks of light make some people nervous.

That’s the bigger picture. Let’s keep Connecting The Dots…