PBS's new documentary series, Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, featured two History professors, Rhae Lynn Barnes and Tera Hunter, as on-screen commentators. In addition, Rhae Lynn Barnes served as Executive Advisor and co-wrote the script for Episode 4 of the documentary. Originally premiering April 2019, the four-part documentary can be streamed at PBS.
About the Film
Henry Louis Gates Jr. presents a vital new four-hour documentary series on Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. The series explores the transformative years following the American Civil War, when the nation struggled to rebuild itself in the face of profound loss, massive destruction, and revolutionary social change. The twelve years that composed the post-war Reconstruction era (1865-77) witnessed a seismic shift in the meaning and makeup of our democracy, with millions of former slaves and free black people seeking out their rightful place as equal citizens under the law. Though tragically short-lived, this bold democratic experiment was, in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, a ‘brief moment in the sun’ for African Americans, when they could advance, and achieve, education, exercise their right to vote, and run for and win public office.