In this final episode of "Reconstruction," the filmmakers trace the story of civil rights from 1890-1915. By the 1890s, the Democratic Party was firmly in control of the Southern states. One exception was Wilmington, N.C., where blacks held prominent positions in government. But a violent coup d'état in 1898 eliminated that government. Jim Crown had now firmly taken hold.
The film explores how propaganda contributed to establishing a new narrative of Reconstruction, twisting it into a story of "the lost cause" and "redemption" of the South. By 1900, there was only one black member remaining in Congress, George Henry White of North Carolina. Edward A. Pollard's book "The Lost Cause" spun a tale not of a lost Civil War, but of a victory over Reconstruction. The slanted view of history was promoted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization that worked tirelessly to rewrite children's history textbooks about the post-Civil War South.
At a time when the minstrel shows were showcasing a stereotype named Jim Crow, Frederick Douglass was using the medium of photography to paint a different picture of blacks in America. Photography in the age reveals a dignity and beauty of blacks who were using the medium to tell their own life stories. At the celebrated Paris Exposition of 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois compiled a series of 363 photographs for an exhibit and subsequent album entitled "Types of American Negroes, Georgia, U.S.A. and Negro Life in Georgia, U.S.A." DuBois came to be the leading black intellectual of the early twentieth century with his masterpiece, "The Souls of Black Folks."
In addition to photography, fiction, and poetry, music comes into full-blown expression, championed by James Weldon Johnson, who had classical musical training. Bert Williams and George Walker respond to the abhorrent white minstrel shows with their own version.
Du Bois joins forces with "Boston Guardian" editor William Monroe Trotter in 1905 for the Niagara Movement. Its "Declaration of Principles" asserted that "we refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults." Du Bois is also instrumental in the establishment of the NAACP. His journal "The Crisis" includes remarkable pictorial images on the journal covers. The NAACP takes a strong stand against the false narrative depicted in the film epic "The Birth of a Nation," which portrayed "the cultural apex of Southern redemption."
This outstanding four-part series concludes with a recapitulation of the remarkable achievements of Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. Du Bois over the course the half century covered from 1865-1915.
The film explores how propaganda contributed to establishing a new narrative of Reconstruction, twisting it into a story of "the lost cause" and "redemption" of the South. By 1900, there was only one black member remaining in Congress, George Henry White of North Carolina. Edward A. Pollard's book "The Lost Cause" spun a tale not of a lost Civil War, but of a victory over Reconstruction. The slanted view of history was promoted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization that worked tirelessly to rewrite children's history textbooks about the post-Civil War South.
At a time when the minstrel shows were showcasing a stereotype named Jim Crow, Frederick Douglass was using the medium of photography to paint a different picture of blacks in America. Photography in the age reveals a dignity and beauty of blacks who were using the medium to tell their own life stories. At the celebrated Paris Exposition of 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois compiled a series of 363 photographs for an exhibit and subsequent album entitled "Types of American Negroes, Georgia, U.S.A. and Negro Life in Georgia, U.S.A." DuBois came to be the leading black intellectual of the early twentieth century with his masterpiece, "The Souls of Black Folks."
In addition to photography, fiction, and poetry, music comes into full-blown expression, championed by James Weldon Johnson, who had classical musical training. Bert Williams and George Walker respond to the abhorrent white minstrel shows with their own version.
Du Bois joins forces with "Boston Guardian" editor William Monroe Trotter in 1905 for the Niagara Movement. Its "Declaration of Principles" asserted that "we refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults." Du Bois is also instrumental in the establishment of the NAACP. His journal "The Crisis" includes remarkable pictorial images on the journal covers. The NAACP takes a strong stand against the false narrative depicted in the film epic "The Birth of a Nation," which portrayed "the cultural apex of Southern redemption."
This outstanding four-part series concludes with a recapitulation of the remarkable achievements of Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. Du Bois over the course the half century covered from 1865-1915.
