Introducing Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise

Malcolm Gladwell· Host0:00

[gentle music] This is Malcolm Gladwell. I want you to imagine a time when the United States was split in two, and then awkwardly started putting itself back together as millions of people had to fight for the right to become citizens. It was a time of chaos and sometimes violence. Americans struggled over questions like, who has the right to vote, to own property? In short, who belongs? I'm talking about Reconstruction, the era following the Civil War, when Americans ended slavery and expanded voting rights, but none of this was easy. Many people lost their lives trying to change the nation for the better. President Barack Obama says we forget lessons of this time at our peril.

Barack Obama· Host0:50

Here's a moment, the first real moment since the founding, in which this idea of perfecting the union is attempted in a fairly significant way.

Malcolm Gladwell· Host1:04

So in this series, we ask why America has yet to make good on the promise of Reconstruction, and we hear how it still might.

Speaker 3· Soundbite1:12

There's not a more revolutionary moment in American history than Reconstruction.

Speaker 4· Soundbite1:17

It's absolutely a new beginning for the United States.

Malcolm Gladwell· Host1:21

To bring you this story, we dig through old archives, letters, diaries, court records, eyewitness testimony. What emerges are the triumphs