Democracy in the United States is under threat. The Trump
administration's attack on the legacy of the civil rights movement is
undermining America's claims to be a multi-racial democracy.
This moment of peril has worrying parallels with a previous era of
American history. The gains of the Reconstruction era after the civil
war, which saw African Americans given full democratic rights, were
totally reversed within a generation. There is a serious risk that the
advances of the civil rights era - the 'Second Reconstruction' - will go
the same way unless we learn from the past and appreciate that American
democracy has never been a story of linear progress. Skilfully analysing
the similarities - and the differences - between the 1870s and the
2010s, Johnson outlines a political strategy for avoiding a disastrous
repetition of history in in the twilight of the Second Reconstruction.
Anyone interested in seeing the Trump presidency in wider historical
context, from students of race, politics and history in the US to the
interested general reader, will find this book an essential and sobering
guide to our past - and, if we're not careful, our future.