This is a superb collection of essays, most written by younger scholars of the Reconstruction era, all exploring the tensions embedded in the effort to remember Reconstruction from the late nineteenth century through our own times. Taken collectively, these pieces demonstrate how much the memory of Reconstruction matters: how it has been used to further particular political agendas, how it has shaped the perspectives of national leaders as well as more ordinary folk, and how it remains a vibrant touchstone in the struggle to advance racial justice. These essays, too, enrich our understanding of how historical memory works. Never a simple invocation of the past in a present-day context, memory always involves a reshaping and reappropriation that occurs in many different contexts depending on locality, genre, personal history, as well as national and global circumstances.

The book opens with essays by Stephen Prince and Jason Ward establishing the continuing importance of Reconstruction memories for white Southerners in their efforts to shore up the Jim Crow system. Prince sees Southern white leaders in the late nineteenth century reviving negative portrayals of the “carpetbagger” as a way to delegitimize “northern” perspectives about African Americans, thereby allowing them to push back against attempts by the federal government to intervene in Southern politics. Jason Ward finds Southern Democrats likewise hurling the carpetbagger epithet in the New Deal era, although given the politics of the 1930s, it now meant attacking liberal members of their own party, even the president. Essays by Shawn Alexander, Justin Behrend, and Carole Emberton do critical work in exploring and analyzing African American counter-memories of Reconstruction, observing the efforts of activists and ordinary folk to shape their own usable narrative from facts and private recollections. Mark Elliott, Natalie Ring, and Samuel Schaffer explore the memory of Reconstruction on the national stage and how it helped set the context for national discussions of the “Negro Question,” imperialism and empire, and President Woodrow Wilson's global vision during and after the Great War. The volume concludes with essays by Elaine Frantz Parsons, who explores how the Klan has been portrayed in U.S. history texts; and Bruce Baker, who looks at an unusual moment in South Carolina in the 1970s, when the progress of the Civil Rights movement made the “salience of memories of Reconstruction” less pressing (274).

The collection has a compelling flow, with several essays highlighting similar themes and making connections to other works in the volume. A number of essays stand out for the particularly thoughtful and nuanced way in which they explore the complicated process by which historical memories are shaped and the kind of political work those memories do. Shawn Alexander's essay on black journalist T. Thomas Fortune and Justin Behrend's essay on black Mississippi Congressman John Lynch make for an unusually reflective pairing. Both show how, under different circumstances, black men of the Gilded Age slanted their Reconstruction memories in slightly different ways. Alexander documents how Fortune, deeply affected by his own personal circumstances, insisted on chronicling the violence of the Reconstruction era and, in many ways, anticipated the historical work done by W. E. B. DuBois in the 1930s. Lynch, as Behrend argues, hoped to highlight the competence and aptitude of black politicians and the ability of black and white peoples to work together and so “pulled his punches” when it came to depicting the radical objectives of Republican rule and the role of white-on-black violence in overturning Reconstruction (87). Carole Emberton's piece excels in its penetrating exploration of the WPA narrative of ex-slave Hannah Irwin, who gave her government interviewer a decidedly negative impression of black Reconstruction efforts and a surprisingly positive view of the KKK. Rather than dismiss Irwin's account, as the scholarship tends to do, as an unreliable narrative produced by all the well-known problems of the WPA project, Emberton takes a different tack: she urges us to think about the texture and emotions of Irwin's interview; how it may have reflected the sense of disorder many ex-slaves experienced during Reconstruction; and a longing for a return to stability, even under white domination. Mark Elliott, too, does excellent work in his consideration of the little-studied “Lake Mohonk Conferences” on the “Negro Question” in 1890–91. With a focus on intersectional reconciliation among whites, the conferences compelled participants to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of Reconstruction and drove many to conclude that African Americans had been unprepared for full citizenship, even prompting some to offer praise for slavery. Elliott sees this as a critical moment when a new type of consensus was forged on the negative story of Reconstruction, one that allowed Northern politicians to more readily acquiesce to Jim Crow.

A few minor weaknesses surface in this collection: some essays tackle important problems but would benefit from a more expansive analysis. Samuel Schaffer's essay on Woodrow Wilson makes the interesting argument that Wilson drew on his own Reconstruction narrative in contemplating U.S. involvement in World War I and the postwar peace process. Yet his account would be richer with more consideration of other factors that likely affected Wilson's diplomatic stance, including growing concerns about Bolshevism and a desire to advance the U.S. position on the world stage. Jason Ward's essay, too, points to notable ways white Southerners during the New Deal continued to harp on the “evils” of Radical Reconstruction but his account could do more to explain how, in an age when most Americans rallied against a racist regime abroad, the white supremacist memory of Reconstruction became less persuasive. Elaine Frantz Parson's study of U.S. history texts finds persistent themes in the portrayal of the Klan, including a fascinating obsession with the organization's alleged “mysteriousness.” Yet Parsons's call for a more complex analysis of the KKK sometimes seems at odds with her study of history textbooks that are, by definition, a genre dependent on simplification. This is particularly true with respect to black “agency,” a topic that Parsons herself acknowledges to be a challenging one to tackle.

Regardless of these limitations, this collection stands out for its expansive and insightful approach to the way a wide range of Americans have remembered the Reconstruction era and how those memories have shaped attitudes about everything from global conflict to industrial education to shoring up—and ultimately dismantling—Jim Crow.