The Perils of Remembering Half of our History

The cyclical nature of American history has been noted in the four stages of the American Cycle – Founding, Abolition, Reconstruction, and Redemption/Regression – yet American society primarily recognizes only two eras: Founding and Abolition. Neglecting Reconstruction and the regressive Redemption era that erased the progress of Reconstruction contributes to our failings as a society to live up to our progressive ideals. 

When the American Cycle is cut in half, we limit our understanding of how American society functions and we develop a pathway for Redeemers to dismantle social advancements made by Reconstructionists. Due to being unaware of the American Cycle, and also by ignoring Reconstruction and Redemption, Americans are often surprised when Reconstruction and Redemption re-occur despite its predictability. For example, the January 6 attack on the Capitol is often described as being unprecedented, but coup d’etats and terrorist violence were normal occurrences created by redeemer politicians during Reconstruction to obtain political power despite the will of the people.

It is due to American society’s limited awareness of Reconstruction and the American Cycle that our history is a constant pattern of one step forward and two steps back. We only know half of the American story.

To get a more detailed description of the American Cycle, you can read this article, but as I mentioned before, the American Cycle consists of four stages: Founding, Abolition, Reconstruction, and Redemption/Regression. 

Founding is the founding of the United States, where American democracy condoned ethnocide–the destruction of a people’s culture while keeping the people–in the form of chattel slavery. Abolition consisted of fighting to abolish slavery, or ethnocide, in the 1800s, and the abolitionist movement culminated in the Civil War in which the North prevailed. Reconstruction was the era after Abolition when the American government attempted to reconstruct this nation into a democracy without slavery/ethnocide. The era of Redemption/Regression occurred after the collapse of Reconstruction, and consisted of dismantling the progress of Reconstruction so that the United States could return to a new Founding era. This era is called “Redemption” because the white Southerners who worked to destroy Reconstruction called themselves “redeemers.” Therefore, when they regained political control of the South, they labeled this era “Redemption.”

The Redemption Era eventually succeeded in bringing back state-sanctioned racial division through Plessy v. Ferguson, and Jim Crow became America’s second Founding Era with segregation becoming the new iteration of ethnocide. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s through to the 2000s became the new era of Abolition. The presidency of Barack Obama became America’s second Reconstruction, and the presidency of Donald Trump became America’s second Redemption/Regression. Joe Biden’s presidency cut short the Regression of Trump’s presidency, but the 2024 presidential election is a choice between continuing Reconstruction and progress or Redemption and Regression.

However, since most Americans are only aware of the first two stages of the Cycle, progressive reformers end up drawing inspiration only from Abolition instead of from Abolition and Reconstruction. Today, when individuals speak of dismantling systemic racism, they commonly refer to themselves as Abolitionists. One can never dismiss the importance of abolishing injustices and racist laws, but if people remain unaware of the progressive stage that follows Abolition, they will not be able to take that vital next step. 

After the abolition of slavery, it was Reconstruction that developed the 13th Amendment which made slavery illegal, the 14th Amendment which gave citizenship and legal rights to freedmen, and the 15th Amendment which gave voting rights to freedmen. Simply removing a system of slavery was not enough, as it was crucial for the government to finally grant legal rights that recognized the freed population, and create institutions such as the Department of Justice and the Freedmen's Bureau to protect and ensure that Black Americans could exercise those rights. 

But by 1877 Reconstruction and American progress succumbed to the violent hands of Redeemers and white terrorist militias, and by the start of the 20th century, Jim Crow had become the new law of the land, which led to the next abolitionist movement. 

The Civil Rights movement occurred from the 1960s to 2008 to abolish Jim Crow, but it was America’s second Reconstruction via the election of America’s first Black president that allowed the progress to survive and grow. Just as during America’s first Reconstruction, the presidency of Barack Obama resulted in an increase in voter turnout of people of color, an increase in elected representatives of color, a re-examining of American citizenship through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and a massive expansion of governmental services such as the Affordable Care Act. But once again, as the American Cycle highlights, the election of President Trump shows that America’s commitment to destroying Reconstruction and its multi-racial progress has not diminished. 

While abolition is necessary for the progress of society, the erasure of a system does not imply that a societal issue has been solved. When Americans only know half of the American Cycle, we develop a cohesive awareness of a negative part of society (the Founding Era), lead an abolitionist movement to remove this negativity, but then lose a sense of what the next step must be. This lack of awareness of Reconstruction provides modern-day Redeemers, or MAGA Republicans, with the opportunity to step in and destroy the progress the American left has tirelessly worked to create since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Our continuous pattern of acknowledging and fighting to abolish the bad, such as Jim Crow and slavery, overshadows our lack of a philosophy of a proactive good that exists beyond abolition and our inability to maintain progress. 

The goal of Reconstruction is to develop systems that must replace what we have erased through a philosophy of good, where “good” means sustainable and nurturing. Ethnocide, systemic racial division, and oppression are neither sustainable nor nurturing.

Abolition presents itself with a clear end goal - removing something and making it nonexistent, but Reconstruction is based on the philosophy that the end is unknown, and has been replaced with the desire to continue good, sustainable, and nurturing practices in perpetuity. Reconstruction is always changing, recognizing what is good just as much as it recognizes the bad. It allows cultures to thrive and develops a sustainable environment that encourages friendship, communication, and the concept of transcending. Once we create progress, we must always transcend and take it a step further, thus there are no limits. 

We have so much potential as a society filled with creative individuals who have empathy and intelligence: creating a space for Reconstruction to thrive and fully practice equality. It would be a shame to hold society back due to the boundaries we have set up ourselves. There is a step beyond Abolition and it is time we become a part of it.