Viewed holistically Reconstruction, 1865-1896, experienced striking juxtapositions that relate to our era. Black elected officials numbers over 1500 including congress, lieutenant governors, local officials. These legislators created resources for public schools, anti poverty

efforts, infrastructure and more. Friedman’s Bureau provided some resources to reunite freed women, men, and families. Black folk built schools, churches, mutual aid societies, farm cooperatives, civic, secular, religious, and political organizations. Black citizenship/dignity

was achieved during these decades, but discretely, precariously, always under threat of white supremacist violence. That violence came in panoramic ways. Presidential Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson (Trump’s closest political forerunner) allowed treasonous confederates to

reclaim land, status, wealth, and privilege with no accountability. Frederick Douglass/abolitionists were rightfully outraged at thus coming peace between the Whites. This action left Blacks without their promised 40 Acres and a Mule. No economic redistribution meant that Black

labor would be under a new system of bondage. Not only that, the lack of accountability emboldened White racists everywhere. Shotgun policies designed to massacre Black Republicans and White allies became the norm, with documented racial pogroms in New Orleans, Memphis, SC, Texas

Mississippi, and all over the South hastening the demise of Federal Reconstruction. The contested presidential election of 1876 put an exclamation point on these shenanigans by allowing a Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes to take office in exchange for troops withdrawing

from the South. With no federal protection White Supremacists (meaning practically all White folks irrespective of social class position) went to work. This meant the end of all pretense of recognizing Black humanity. Northern allies, despite Radical Republicans efforts in

Congress, grew increasingly fatigued over the endless conflict. Black folk fought back and Reconstruction survived in places like Wilmington, NC until an 1898 White Riot murdered and harassed duly elected interracial officials out of office for good. George C. White became the

last Black elected official to serve in Congress for almost 70 years after leaving office in 1901. His Negro Farewell to Congress recounted the decades of murder, lies, and betrayal of democracy borne on the backs of Black people. I recount all of this to offer context for what

we are facing now. This period of America’s Third Reconstruction is unfolding right before our eyes. In a sense @JoeBiden is taking over at the same point that US Grant did in 1869. Blacks fervent hoped that the former commander of the Union Army might become a beacon of racial

justice, enforcing civil and human rights, guaranteeing Black citizenship and proving that the Civil War had not been fought in vain. Black folk not only hoped but they organized. Black women, who were left out of the 15th amendment, organized religious, political, and civic

groups that pressed for literacy, education, land, healthcare, mutual aid and other resources to embolden Black families. Four million free women and men who, after slavery’s end, found themselves forced to work on some of the same plantations they toiled on before the war.

Over 500,000 free Blacks made up a considerable portion of elected officials, politicians, clergy, intellectuals, teachers, artists, organizers, and activists who pushed for the nation to recognize Black humanity and become and interracial democracy. Grant presided over the last

effort, the 1875 Civil Rights Act that was not enforced, to center racial justice as the beating heart of American democracy. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that legalized “separate but equal” formally recognized the victory of White Supremacy over democracy.