Dark sky rising / Gates, Henry Louis

American literary critic, teacher, historian, filmmaker and public intellectual Henry Louis Gates Jr. looks at America's history from 1861 to 1915, focusing on the destruction of slavery, the Reconstruction Amendments, and African-American resilience in times of racial unrest and drawing parallels to them with the early twenty-first century in the United States.

American literary critic, teacher, historian, filmmaker and public intellectual Henry Louis Gates Jr. looks at America's history from 1861 to 1915, focusing on the destruction of slavery, the Reconstruction Amendments, and African-American resilience in times of racial unrest and drawing parallels to them with the early twenty-first century in the United States.

This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. Real-life accounts drive the narrative, spanning the half century between the Civil War and Birth of a Nation. Here, you will come face-to-face with the people and events of Reconstruction's noble democratic experiment, its tragic undermining, and the drawing of a new "color line" in the long Jim Crow era that followed. In introducing young readers to them, and to the resiliency of the African American people at times of progress and betrayal, Professor Gates shares a history that remains vitally relevant today.