Registration is Open: The Rise and Fall of the Not-So-Invisible Empire

Registration is now open for my next online lecture series in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at California State University-East Bay:  The Rise and Fall of the Not-So-Invisible Empire.  

You can register on the OLLI website by clicking here.   Hope to see you there!  In the meanwhile, check out a few of my recommended readings in a previous post.   [Of course, I'll have created a lengthy bibliography by the time the series starts as usual.]  

You might also find the PBS American Experience page Reconstruction: The Second Civil War worth checking out.

On a misty April evening in 1865, a jubilant crowd packed the White House lawn to hear President Abraham Lincoln first speech since the end of the Civil War. They expected a stirring celebration of the Union victory — but instead got harsh reality. Even with the South defeated, Lincoln warned, the future would be "fraught with great difficulty." He called the task ahead reconstruction — a word that returned to American headlines nearly a century and a half later, in the aftermath of the war in Iraq.

Even as Lincoln spoke, opposing forces were gathering. Some Americans saw Reconstruction as a chance to build a new nation out of the ashes of war and slavery. Others vowed to wage a new war to protect their way of life, and a racial order they believed ordained by God. Lincoln saw the problem with agonizing clarity. Bitter enemies, North and South, had to be reconciled. And four million former slaves had to be brought into the life of a nation that had ignored them for centuries. In some ways, it was harder than winning the war.

Three days after delivering his warning, Lincoln was shot dead. Reconstruction would have to go forward without him.

Spanning the momentous years from 1863 to 1877, Reconstruction tracks the extraordinary stories of ordinary Americans — Southern and Northern, white and black — as they struggle to shape new lives for themselves in a world turned upside down.

Reconstruction:  The Second Civil War

American Experience 

Aired January 12, 2004

The Rise and Fall of the Not-So-Invisible Empire: Some Recommended Reading

If you are planning on participating in my next online lecture series, The Rise and Fall of the Not-So-Invisible Empire, you can mark your calendar.  We have it scheduled - and registration is now open.  You can register on the OLLI at CSU-East Bay website by clicking here.

In the meanwhile, I want to recommend some related books that are worth reading whether you are planning on joining me for the series or not.

America's Original Sin:  White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth, and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (John Rhodehamel)

John Rhodehamel weaves together the rise of Lincoln and the evolution of his thinking on slavery from containment to emancipation to racial equality and John Wilkes Booth's rise to fame as an actor, his growing anger and hatred of Lincoln, and the evolution of his plot from kidnapping to assassination.  This is the first book to explicitly name white supremacy as the motivation for Abraham Lincoln's assassination.  (America's Original Sin on Amazon)

Unpunished Murder:  Massacre at Colfax and the Quest for Justice (Lawrence Goldstone) 

On Easter Sunday, 1873, a band of white supremacists attacked the residents of Grant Parish, Louisiana and massacred over 100 African Americans in what is one of the most horrific episodes of mass murder in the United States.  Although those who sought justice for the victims took the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court, no one was ever convicted - and the resulting Cout ruling (US v Cruickshank) helped create a society in which black Americans could be legally oppressed and denied basic human rights, paving the way for Jim Crow laws and institutionalized racism in the American justice system. (Unpunished Murder on Amazon)

Built from the Fire:  The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street (Victor Lukerson)   

Popularly known as America's "Wall Street", Greenwood is a historic district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, During the early 20th century, the district grew into one of the most prominent and prosperous concentrations of African American businesses in the United States.  It was burned to the ground in the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 in which a white mob gathered and attacked the area.  Estimates of deaths range from 75 to 300 with hundreds injured and 5000 left homeless.  Victor Lukerson tells the story of the people who built the Greenwood community and struggled for equal opportunity, the destruction of the community and massacre of its population, and the surviving residents who rebuilt their community.  (Built from the Fire on Amazon)

You can check out the current course offerings at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at CSU-East Bay here.  You don't need to be a member to enroll in a course - and many courses are offered online.