The Third Reconstruction Quotes

“The recognition of Black citizenship progressed unevenly during Reconstruction and after, stymied by domestic terrorists, by high-ranking public officials who betrayed democracy, and by statesmen whose leadership proved to be politically indefensible and morally reprehensible.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

“The Confederacy lost the war but resoundingly won the peace.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

“Blacks were “not yet freed from the bonds of injustice,” Kennedy observed. They were “not yet freed from social and economic oppression.” Then he added an insight that Black abolitionists, civil rights activists, and organizers had advocated for centuries: “And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

“During the Second Reconstruction, which, as mentioned earlier, lasted from the Brown decision in 1954 until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, reconstructionists won important legislative victories in bills declaring formal segregation unconstitutional.”
― Peniel E. Joseph, The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century