The Nation Still Needs a New Birth in Liberty

To Reconstruct the Nation

In the December 2023 issue, The Atlantic revisited Reconstruction, America’s most radical experiment.

I’ve just finished reading “To Reconstruct the Nation” from cover to cover. I found it poignant, inspiring, and a necessary corrective to the 1901 series, which drowned out the sagacious words of Frederick Douglass with those of Woodrow Wilson and the naysayer historians of the Dunning School.

The articles illuminate a side of American history not covered in many contemporary textbooks; they detail the pernicious aftereffects of slavery and the creation of so-called Black Codes. made a compelling case about the racist roots of America’s juvenile-justice system. Few know the history of how Elizabeth Turner was