Reconstruction History Reconsidered

Celebrated historian Fergus M. Bordewich discusses his new book KLAN WAR: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction at the Greensboro History Museum for the annual Dortch series. Panel discussion with UNC Greensboro professors Mark Elliott and Deborah H. Barnes follows.

Free event. Books for sale from Scuppernong Books.

Bordewich is the author of eight previous nonfiction books including Congress at War, The First Congress, and America’s Great Debate. In Klan War, he looks at the rise of the white supremacist terrorist organization immediately following the Civil War and the battles undertaken at federal and state levels to combat horrific acts against newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, including in North Carolina.

Joining Bordewich for the panel discussion will be Dr. Mark Elliott, Professor of History at UNCG and author of Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson. Also on the panel is Dr. Deborah Barnes, Visiting Lecturer in UNCG’s African American & African Diaspora Studies Program and member of the steering committee for the Guilford County Community Remembrance Project. Greensboro History Museum Curator of Collections Ayla Amon will moderate.

This program is made possible by the museum’s Dortch Memorial Endowment, created in memory of John Johnson Dortch (1930-1984) by the attorneys and staff of his law firm, now Fox Rothschild LLP. It is in support of the History Museum’s award-winning exhibition NC Democracy: Eleven Elections, which explores the election of 1868 and ten other contests that shaped what democracy means in our state today.