Make Good the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies
Length: 12 minutes 52 seconds
(Make Good the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies title card)
Spencer Crew:
(Speaker stands at the entrance of the exhibition)
It's my pleasure to introduce you to Make Good the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies.
Our focus in the exhibition is to look at Reconstruction through the eyes of the newly freed, to find out what it meant for them to escape slavery, and to begin to create new lives for themselves. The passage of the 13th Amendment was an important moment in the history of the country because for the very first time, slavery was no longer the law the land. And it meant for these newly freed individuals, they had a chance to craft a new life for themselves, to find a new pathway they could follow as they went forward.
As Frederick Douglass said the hope is that they would be left alone, be able to make their own way without our interference. The reality is, though, is it wasn't quite that simple, that there was opposition along the way that they had to fight through, but fight through they did, and they didn't do it alone. That help also came through the federal government who passed legislation such as the 14th and the 15th Amendment, but also created agencies like the Freedmen's Bureau, whose task was to serve as a middle man between the newly freed and those who would be opposed to or own the land that they would try to either gain control over or work on.
But most of this work was done by the freed people themselves, as they looked to recraft their place and their role in that society.
(Title Card: "1865: America without Slavery" with Spencer Crew, Co-Curator of the Make Good the Promises exhibition. Speaker stands at the entrance of the American Without Slavery section of the exhibition with a quick pan of a dilapidated house.)
The first section of our exhibition is called America Without Slavery. The environment we have created is a space that looks like a dilapidated house in the South that suffered from the Civil War, but also suffering from the demise of slavery and what it's meant for the individuals who are once enslaved to now be free.
The larger conversation here, though, is what are they going to do? What will the new we free do with this new status in society? And there are lots of different questions that face them as they go forward. And we illustrate them through some of the spaces in the exhibition, including windows, which you can begin to look at these individuals as they grapple with certain kind of issues, such as will we get justice?
Will we get land? Will we be protected? These are all issues that are at the foremost of the mind of these individuals We want to highlight what they're thinking, but we also want to make sure that the visitor is aware early on that there's opposition that's arising. There are individuals who do not want them to be free or individuals who do not want to treat them equally. And those voices are here as well.
Katy Kendrick:
(Title card "The Freedmen's Bureau" with Katy Kendrick Co-Curator for Make Good the Promises exhibition. Speaker stands at the entrance of the section.)
This section of the exhibition is about the Freedmen's Bureau, which played a significant role in the events of Reconstruction. In March 1865, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, also known as the Freedmen's Bureau. This federal agency operated in 15 states throughout the South between 1865 and 1872. It provided aid to newly freed men, women, and children as they began to build new lives after slavery. Through their interactions with the Freedmen's Bureau, African-Americans sought to secure the things that they needed to build new lives as free citizens, including land, family, education and justice.
The section also includes information about the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company also known as the Freedman's Savings Bank. The Freedman's Bank was not part of the Freedmen's Bureau, but was chartered by Congress at the same time in March of 1865. The idea behind the bank was to provide African Americans, including civil war veterans with a safe place to deposit their money. But myth management and corruption on the part of the bank white trustees ultimately led to the bank's collapse in 1873.
The failure of the Freedman's Savings Bank had a devastating impact on African American families and communities, and was a harbinger of the difficulties and discriminations that African Americans would continue to face as they tried to build economic security and wealth in the coming generations.
Candra Flanagan:
(Title card "Visions of Freedom: Family" with Candra Flanagan. Speaker stands at the entrance to the section with quick pans of family photos and gallery cases showing domestic objects.)
Welcome to the Family section of the exhibition. This section highlights the efforts of the newly freed to create, nurture, and protect their families as they desired. As newly freed people reunited and established their families, they set up households. A home of their own furnished with their own possessions signified freedom, security, and success.
(Text on screen "Visions of Freedom: Land and Labor" followed by speaker standing in the Land and Labor section of the exhibition.)
Welcome to the Land and Labor section. Economic independence was crucial for the newly freed. They appreciated that control of their own land and labor was a solid foundation for self sufficiency.
(Text on screen "Visions of Freedom: Community.")
For African Americans coming out of slavery, freedom meant the opportunity to take control of their educational, religious, economic, and social lives. To achieve this, they established independent institutions, such as schools, churches, businesses, and associations. These institutions provided infrastructure for the African American community and refuge from oppression.
Of all of the things that freedom signify to the newly freed, the right to educate themselves and their children was one of the most prized. During reconstruction, access to education became a key measure of African American progress towards equal citizenship. African Americans led the movement to make public education a right not only for themselves but for all citizens, and the first Black colleges and universities in the South were founded during Reconstruction.
During Reconstruction, as Black men gained the right to vote and run for office, many ministers also became leaders in local, state and national politics.
Katy Kendrick:
(Title card "Visions of Freedom: Democracy" with quick ban of the gallery entrance followed by the speaker standing in the gallery.)
We're now in the section of the exhibition entitled "Visions of Freedom: Democracy." During Reconstruction, African Americans gained new civil and political rights, including the right to vote and hold elected office, equal protection under the law and legal recognition as US citizens. These rights were initially established and protected at the federal level through sweeping changes to the U.S. Constitution. The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime, the 14th Amendment, which provided equal protection, due process and birthright citizenship and the 15th Amendment, which prohibited states from restricting the right to vote based on race.
Between 1865 and 1876, over 1500 African American men served in public office in southern states. They were state senators and representatives, justices of the peace, sheriffs, superintendents of board of education, Lieutenant governors and more. Perhaps the most visible example of African American political gains during Reconstruction was the election of the first black U.S. senators and representatives to Congress. For the first time in history, black men served as the nation's lawmakers.
Throughout the South in late 1865 and early 1866, black men and women held conventions to protest their treatment by the governments of the former Confederate states, which had agreed to abolish slavery, but then enacted Black Codes, laws which restricted the rights of formerly enslaved people. Freedmen's conventions drew national attention to the injustice of the Black Codes and in response, Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, under which African Americans gained the right to vote in the South and participated in state constitutional conventions, where they wrote new laws, guaranteeing equal rights to all regardless of race.
Also in the Democracy section we have a video entitled women in equal rights, which looks at how African American women defined and asserted their political status during Reconstruction.
As we talk about the gains toward political equality that African Americans made during Reconstruction, we also talk about the efforts to oppose, deny and roll back those gains. Efforts to construct black political power and create a multiracial democracy were challenged and resisted by those Americans who sought to reconstruct white supremacy. The widespread use of violence, fraud and intimidation to suppress black voting in the South, combined with the federal governments reneging on its promise to defend and enforce black civil rights, allowed white supremacists to regain control of state governments in the South. As a result, Reconstruction ends not with democracy, but with a system of widespread racial discrimination, Jim Crow, that relegated African American to second class citizenship.
Paul Gardullo:
(Title card Make Good the Promises: Reconstruction and It's Legacies, "Legacies of Reconstruction" with Paul Gardullo, Director of the Make Good the Promises exhibition. Speaker stands in the exhibition gallery.)
Welcome to the Legacy section of the Make Good the Promises exhibition. While the earlier sections of the exhibition focused on the visions of freedom, African Americans in the late 19th century used to enact their questions about how they would be free and equal citizens in the United States. The legacy section focuses on the reverberation of those struggles and on the reverberations of the limitations placed by a racist society on those visions of freedom.
In the Mass Incarceration section, we look at the legacies of race and incarceration in America, a nation where two thirds of its prison population are made up of African Americans and mostly men. In particular, we look at the lives of the Angola Three, men who were imprisoned in solitary confinement for the longest period of American history on the site of Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, a place that was once slave plantation.
We ask visitors to think about the questions of reparations. We look at the case study of Georgetown University as a lens through which many institutions, including colleges and universities, are grappling with the responsibility they have toward repairing the past.
We look at the question of civil disobedience and racial justice through the lens in life of Bree Newsome. We display Bree Newsome's climbing gear, which she used to ascend the state flag pole and remove the Confederate flag from the state house in June of 2015, just one week after a horrendous racial massacre at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in that same state.
We also look at the question of the Lost Cause, which was a mythology built in the immediate aftermath of the South's loss of the Civil War, but continued right through the 20th Century. In the story of the Lost Cause we display two windows that were dismantled from Washington's National Cathedral that had celebrated figures from the Civil War who fought for slavery.
(View of two stained-glass windows celebrating those who fought for slavery.)
Spencer Crew:
(Speaker standing in the Legacies gallery of the exhibition.)
One of the most important legacies that still challenges in us in society is the issue of racial profiling.
The issue of voter suppression was an important question during Reconstruction, and it remains a challenge for us in today's society. No better is that illustrated than to the work of Stacey Abrams, where she, in Georgia, looked at trying to find strategies to allow everyone to have the right to vote.
(View of a blue dress worn by Stacey Abrams.)
The other aspect of Reconstruction that continues to be a challenge for us is a question of violence directed towards African American institutions. When people find them a threat because of what they stand for and how they allow African Americans organize themselves. We find the same problem plaguing us in today's society and is most strongly illustrated through what happened at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston.
Candra Flanagan:
(Text "Refections Space shown with pans of the gallery followed by the speaker standing the the exhibition section.)
To conclude the experience visitors are invited to reflect on the stories that they encountered, the triumphs and gains of Reconstruction, as well as the promises yet to be fulfilled. In this section, visitors are asked how they would reconstruct America. We are the beneficiaries of the gains of Reconstruction and as historical actors in our own ways and in our own time, we are called upon to be the leaders, to make good the promises. What will you do?
(Closing text: Make Good the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies is on view through August 21, 2022 in the Bank of America Special Exhibitions gallery at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and is generously supported by: NMAAHC Corporate Leadership Council, The TJX Companies, Inc., Toyota, with additional support from the Rockefeller Foundation.)
