The Reconstructionist Weekly: The Lost Cause of the Confederacy & the Attacks on DEI

Much of The Reconstructionist focuses on Barrett Holmes Pitner’s theory of the American Cycle, which helps explain how and why America’s current political crisis mirrors the aftermath of the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877.

As President Donald Trump aggressively implements his regressive agenda, the parallels between the past and the present have become abundant and unmistakable. To highlight these parallels, we will publish The Reconstructionist Weekly each Monday, summarizing the regressive policies that undermine our democracy and how they mirror the past.

Then → After Reconstruction’s collapse in 1877, Southern white supremacists launched a campaign of historical revisionism known as the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. This ideology falsely framed the Confederacy as a noble struggle for states’ rights rather than slavery, glorifying Confederate leaders while erasing the brutality of slavery and the progress made during Reconstruction. 

Academic distortion played a key role, and at the center of it was the Dunning School. Led by Columbia professor William Dunning, the Dunning School dominated early 20th-century scholarship, painting Reconstruction as a "tragic era" of "Black misrule" and corrupt Northern interlopers. Their work—echoed in films like The Birth of a Nation (1915) and textbooks—falsely claimed that Black politicians were incompetent, defended white supremacist violence as necessary, and erased the achievements of biracial democracy.

During Jim Crow, monuments to Confederate generals were erected across the South in a deliberate effort to reinforce white supremacy and the individuals who fought to uphold it. Even domestic terrorists were memorialized. In New Orleans, white supremacists who staged the Battle of Liberty Place in 1874, a coup against Louisiana’s Reconstruction government, were later honored with a monument that wasn’t removed until 2017. This directly mirrors modern efforts to recast the January 6th attack as a peaceful protest. It is not far-fetched that a statue glorifying those insurrectionists might be erected in the next four years. 

Textbooks were also rewritten to downplay slavery’s central role in the war, and organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy worked to instill this myth into public memory. The work of critical figures like James T. Rapier and Hiram Revels was erased from narratives, as were those of white allies like Judge Albion Tourgée, who documented Klan terror. Without a strong federal government presence in the South, this historical distortion flourished, and racism continued under the guise of heritage and tradition. 

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Now → Today, the Trump administration is waging a similar battle over historical memory and racial progress. His attacks and labeling of DEI as “illegal and immoral discrimination” mirror the Lost Cause’s rewriting of history. Just like Regression-era white supremacists rewrote the narrative of the Civil War to erase Black agency, the Trump administration now seeks to dismantle DEI by portraying it as reverse discrimination rather than a solution to centuries of exclusion.

(Note: The regressive era that followed Reconstruction is normally referred to as the “Redemption Era,” but this is the name that former Confederates and opponents of Reconstruction named this time period as they “redeemed” the South by undoing the progress of Reconstruction and disseminating pro-South propaganda. At The Reconstructionist, we combat this anti-Reconstruction rhetoric by referring to the era that followed Reconstruction as the Regression era.)

Trump’s rhetoric frames DEI as a threat to "real Americans," much like how the Lost Cause framed Reconstruction as a corrupt era of "Black rule" that needed to be overturned. By attacking DEI initiatives in corporations, universities, and government agencies, Trump is replicating exactly what happened during the Regression era—dismantling systems designed to address racial inequity while casting those defending it as radicals.

His most recent attack on DEI came in the form of an executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which demands that “divisive-race centered ideology” be eliminated from all Smithsonian museums. Trump claims that in recent years, the Smithsonian Institution has “promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive,” and ordered that the federal government not fund exhibits or programs that “divide Americans by race.”

The order specifically called out the National Museum of African American History and Culture because it said that “hard work,” “individualism,” and “the nuclear family” are aspects of “White culture.” The museum opened at the end of President Obama’s term in 2016, a direct attack on progress made during America’s second Reconstruction. Trump is effectively reviving the same strategy used by Redeemers after Reconstruction. Both groups defunded racial justice efforts, then claimed that their failure is proof that equality was never needed in the first place.

The backlash against DEI is not just about policy—it’s about controlling the narrative. The Lost Cause succeeded because it became the dominant story of the Civil War, and most Americans, as a result, know very little about Reconstruction and the Black and white heroes who implemented it. Today, Trump’s anti-DEI rhetoric seeks to do the same: redefine racial progress as discrimination, paint equity as oppression, and spread an American narrative that erases the heroes and accomplishments of America’s multi-racial, equitable democracy.