Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Neo-abolitionists===
In the 1960s, [[Neoabolitionism (race relations)|neo-abolitionist]] historians emerged, led by [[John Hope Franklin]], [[Kenneth Stampp]], [[Leon Litwack]], and [[Eric Foner]]. Influenced by the [[civil rights movement]], they rejected the Dunning School and found a great deal to praise in Radical Reconstruction. Foner, the primary advocate of this view, argued that it was never truly completed, and that a "Second Reconstruction" was needed in the late 20th century to complete the goal of full equality for African Americans. The neo-abolitionists followed the revisionists in minimizing the corruption and waste created by Republican state governments, saying it was no worse than [[William M. Tweed|Boss Tweed]]'s ring in New York City.{{sfnp|Williams|1946|p=469}}{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=xxii}}

Instead, they emphasized that suppression of the rights of African Americans was a worse scandal, and a grave corruption of America's [[Republicanism|republicanist]] ideals. They argued that the tragedy of Reconstruction was not that it failed because Blacks were incapable of governing, especially as they did not dominate any state government, but that it failed because Whites raised an insurgent movement to restore White supremacy. White-elite-dominated state legislatures passed disenfranchising state constitutions from 1890 to 1908 that effectively barred most Blacks and many poor Whites from voting. This disenfranchisement affected millions of people for decades into the 20th century, and closed African Americans {{em|and}} poor Whites out of the political process in the South.<ref name="Glenn Feldman 2004, pp. 135–136">{{cite book |last=Feldman |first=Glenn |title=The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama |date=2004 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820326153 |location=Athens |pages=135–136}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731 |first=Richard H. |last=Pildes |title=Democracy, Anti-democracy, and the Canon |journal=Constitutional Commentary |volume=17 |date=2000 |page=27 |access-date=March 15, 2008 |archive-date=November 21, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181121211213/https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Re-establishment of White supremacy meant that within a decade African Americans were excluded from virtually all local, state, and federal governance in all states of the South. Lack of representation meant that they were treated as second-class citizens, with schools and services consistently underfunded in segregated societies, no [[jury service|representation on juries]] or in [[law enforcement]], and [[bias]] in other legislation. It was not until the [[civil rights movement]] and the passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] and the [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965 that segregation was outlawed and suffrage restored, under what has in retrospect been referred to as the "Second Reconstruction".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McPherson |first=James M. |date=1978 |title=The Dimensions of Change: The First and Second Reconstructions |journal=The Wilson Quarterly |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=135–144 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Codrington III |first=Wilfred |date=2020-07-20 |title=The United States Needs a Third Reconstruction |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/united-states-needs-third-reconstruction/614293/ |access-date=2024-03-03 |website=The Atlantic |language=en}}</ref>

In 1990, [[Eric Foner]] concluded that from the Black point of view "Reconstruction must be judged a failure."{{sfnp|Foner|1990|p=255}}<ref>{{harvnb|Foner|1990|p=256}}: Foner adds: "What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the accomplishments that endured."</ref> Foner stated Reconstruction was "a noble if flawed experiment, the first attempt to introduce a genuine inter-racial democracy in the United States".<ref name="Foner 2009" /> According to him, the many factors contributing to the failure included: lack of a permanent federal agency ''specifically'' designed for the enforcement of civil rights; the [[Morrison R. Waite]] Supreme Court decisions that dismantled previous congressional civil rights legislation; and the economic reestablishment of Whiggish white planters in the South by 1877. Historian [[William McFeely]] explained that although the constitutional amendments and civil rights legislation on their own merit were remarkable achievements, no permanent government agency whose specific purpose was civil rights enforcement had been created.{{refn|group="lower-roman"|Although Grant and Attorney General Amos T. Akerman set up a strong legal system to protect African Americans, the Department of Justice did not set up a permanent Civil Rights Division until the [[Civil Rights Act of 1957]].{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|pp=372–373; 424, 425}}}}

More recent work by Nina Silber, [[David W. Blight]], Cecelia O'Leary, Laura Edwards, LeeAnn Whites, and Edward J. Blum has encouraged greater attention to race, religion, and issues of gender while at the same time pushing the effective end of Reconstruction to the end of the 19th century, while monographs by Charles Reagan Wilson, Gaines Foster, W. Scott Poole, and Bruce Baker have offered new views of the Southern "[[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]]".<ref name="whatreconstructionmeant">{{cite book |last=Baker |first=Bruce E. |title=What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South |date=2007 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=9780813926605 |location=Charlottesville}}</ref>{{sfnp|Brown|2008|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}