Scene on radio is sponsored by better help, and our listeners get ten % off their first month of online therapy at better help dot com. Slash scene, a content warning, this episode includes descriptions of intense violence. In 18 29, the black amer writer david walker published his book, an appeal to the colored citizens of the world: whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and bloodthirsty set of beings. It took the cataclysm of the civil war to bring a white american president to a similar view.
After the Civil War, a surprising coalition tried to remake the United States into a real multiracial democracy for the first time. Reconstruction, as the effort was called, brought dramatic change to America. For a while.
Reported and produced by John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. The series script editor is Loretta Williams. Interviews with Victoria Smalls, Brent Morris, Eric Foner, Kidada Williams, Bobby Donaldson, and Edward Baptist.
Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.
Photo: Historian Bobby Donaldson of the University of South Carolina, at the South Carolina State House, Columbia, SC. Photo by John Biewen.