This is part two of our two-part conversation with Manisha Sinha about Reconstruction. Part one is here. In part two, Manisha discusses the historiography of reconstruction, the afterlives of “reconstruction and its discontents,” the eventual defeat of Reconstruction as the U.S. rose to become an imperial power, and the lessons contemporary activists can draw from the Reconstruction period.

Dr. Manisha Sinha is a history professor at the University of Connecticut. She is the author and co-author of several books, including The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (2016) and The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920, published this year. 

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