Conversation with Eric Foner, The Second Founding

During this session, the Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs discussed The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Pulitzer Prize-winner Eric Foner.

In his authoritative history of the United States' post-Civil War Reconstruction Era, Foner traces the arc of three constitutional amendments from their origins in antebellum activism and adoption amidst intense postwar politics to their virtual nullification by narrow Supreme Court decisions and Jim Crow state laws. Today these amendments remain strong tools for achieving the American ideal of equality, if only we will take them up.

This video is licensed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.