Rediscovering Reconstruction in the Urban South: Achievements and New Opportunities

Abstract

In the decades following Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution, which synthesized revisions to the Lost Cause narrative of Dunning school, scholars have expanded the scope of Reconstruction studies and debated its emancipatory potential. Among these new avenues of inquiry, Southern cities have undergone a quiet renaissance as settings for studying the period’s larger themes, particularly the South’s economic recovery and the African American struggle for freedom and equality. However, these achievements have come without close engagement with the work of urbanists who theorize the city as an autonomous force in human history. By making cities subjects, as opposed to settings, historians can gain new insights into how the process of Reconstruction unfolded in the postwar South. This essay begins by exploring the different worlds of urban and Civil War era historiography. It then considers how historians of Reconstruction have studied cities and how they can move the field forward by considering the city as an agent of change.