The Second Post Reconstruction: What Happens When We Forget the Cost of Progress

There is a rhythm to American history, a back-and-forth between expansion and retreat, progress and backlash. Every time this nation opens its doors wider, forces rise up to close them again.

That is where we are now.

The Supreme Court is considering a case, Louisiana v. Callais, that could strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the very provision that protects communities of color from being erased through redistricting.

According to The New York Times, if the Court eliminates Section 2, Republicans could erase a dozen or more majority-minority congressional districts across the South. The result would not simply tilt the political map. It would alter the balance of power, potentially locking in minority rule even when the majority of voters choose differently.

This is not a new story. It is an old one, returning in modern dress.

Photo Credit: Jemal Countess, Getty Images For Legal Defense Fund

The First Post Reconstruction: South Carolina as the Warning

In his new book, Congressman Jim Clyburn reminds us that after the Civil War, South Carolina sent eight Black men to Congress. They were part of a larger group of 16 African Americans who served nationally during the Reconstruction era—14 in the House of Representatives and two in the United States Senate.

These trailblazers, men like Robert Smalls, Joseph Rainey, Richard Cain, and Blanche K. Bruce, emerged from the ashes of slavery to help shape a democracy that, for the first time, included people who had once been owned as property. They built schools, passed civil rights laws, and expanded opportunity for newly freed citizens.

But that extraordinary progress provoked extraordinary backlash.

By 1895, white supremacist leaders in South Carolina, led by Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, convened a constitutional convention with a clear purpose: to end Black political power. Tillman later bragged on the Senate floor:

“We did not disfranchise the negroes until 1895, avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many of them as we could under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.”

The new constitution imposed literacy tests, poll taxes, and “understanding” clauses that pretended to protect democracy but in truth strangled it.

It worked. South Carolina, which had once led the nation in Black representation, would not send another African American to Congress for nearly 100 years—until Jim Clyburn’s election in 1992.

That is what it means to lose progress quietly.

Echoes in Our Time

We are watching the same pattern unfold again.

If Section 2 falls, legislatures across the South and beyond will move quickly to redraw districts, diluting the political power of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native voters. But the rollback does not stop at the ballot box.

Across this country, the same forces are targeting the rights that define equality itself.

- Reproductive freedom has been stripped away with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
- Affirmative action has been eliminated, closing pathways to education and opportunity.
- Marriage equality, labor rights, and disability protections are being challenged in courts and legislatures.
- Book bans and curriculum censorship are spreading in an effort to rewrite the story of who built America and who belongs here.

The intent is unmistakable: They want to dismantle the protections that showcase the diversity of our democracy and to reassert control by those who fear that diversity.

What We Learned from “The Colored Girls”

This week on my podcast, I sat down with four women who have spent their lives fighting for inclusion inside American politics—Minyon Moore, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Tina Flournoy, co-authors of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics.

We talked about the importance of knowing our history, like the battles fought by leaders like Reverend Jesse Jackson, Ron Brown, and others who opened doors that had long been closed. They worked from within the system to ensure that communities historically left out could finally have a seat at the table and a say in the direction of this country.

But we also talked about how fragile those gains are. Progress, representation, inclusion—all the networks of opportunity they built can unravel with one ruling or one election.

That conversation reminded me that history is not static. It moves forward only when people push it forward.

Progress Worth Defending

From the 16 African Americans who served during Reconstruction, to the foot soldiers of Selma, to the women and men who transformed our political institutions in the late 20th century, each generation has added another layer of progress.

The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Title IX, Head Start, Medicare, Social Security—these are not symbols. They are living commitments to fairness, opportunity, and dignity for every American.

To lose them would not simply be a policy defeat. It would be a moral collapse.

The Second Post Reconstruction

The first Reconstruction gave America its first true vision of multiracial democracy, and white supremacist violence crushed it. The second Reconstruction, born from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, rebuilt that vision through courage, organizing, and sacrifice.

Now we stand in the early stages of a second post-Reconstruction—a deliberate, coordinated campaign to reverse those gains, using courts, statehouses, and disinformation to roll back progress and restrict participation.

This is not a regional struggle. It is national. The same forces that once used literacy tests and poll taxes are now using legal doctrine and technology to accomplish the same goal: control without consent.

We are watching history rhyme, and the cost of silence will be high.

What We Can Do Now

We cannot allow fatigue, fear, or cynicism to paralyze us. The answer is the same as it has always been—organize, educate, and unite.

1. Build a coalition as broad as the democracy we are trying to save. This fight is not only about Black voters. It is about every community that believes freedom must be shared to be real.
2. Invest in civic education and participation. Knowledge is the armor of democracy. We must teach not only how to vote but why it matters.
3. Protect and expand access to the ballot. Support automatic registration, early voting, vote-by-mail, and independent redistricting commissions in every state.
4. Support local leaders and organizations who are registering voters, fighting suppression, and building community power.
5. Tell the truth about our history. The more we understand what Reconstruction achieved and why it was undone, the better prepared we are to stop it from happening again.

6. Win the midterm elections. To halt the erosion of rights in the United States, Democrats must secure control of at least one congressional body.

The Road Ahead

The antidote to this second post-Reconstruction is unity—a coalition of conscience that refuses to surrender the idea of America to fear or fatigue.

We owe it to those 16 Reconstruction leaders who took their seats in Congress, to the movement that restored democracy in the 1960s, to the “Colored Girls” and their generation who opened doors inside the system, and to every young person who still believes in a nation that works for all of us.

History is not just repeating. It is reminding.

And this time, we cannot afford to forget.