Reconstruction: America After the Civil War

In the generation after the Confederacy’s surrender, the efforts of the federal government to secure the constitutional rights of the newly emancipated met with concerted and often violent pushback in the South and bitterly contested battles in Washington. The underpinnings of the Reconstruction, the factors that brought about its undoing, and the societal repercussions still felt a century-and-a-half later are tellingly analyzed in this PBS effort from writer/host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 4 hrs on two discs. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English.