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[[File:dubois.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|W.E.B. Du Bois, author of Black Reconstruction in America (1935)]]__NOTOC__The Reconstruction era of United States history has spawned renewed interest. It has become a critical period to study because it helps us understand the nature of political representation and the nature of democracy in moments of crisis. Coming after the Civil War, Reconstruction was the period that attempted to settle the question of the Confederate states’ re-entry into the union while also dealing with the question of the citizenship of four million Black freedpeople.  At the core of these questions were both the idea of Black voting rights and the potential service of Black politicians. Significant political leadership on both the federal and state levels would emanate emanated from the Black community. Some of the more famous of these leaders were Hiram Revels, P.B.S. Pinchback, and Robert Smalls. They would offer offered an enduring legacy in helping legislate into existence policies on education, civil rights, and economic reforms.

The story of Reconstruction had either been neglected or distorted for three or four several generations after it concluded. Much of the neglect and distortion continues, but it was to the credit of W.E.B. Du Bois and his monumental effort, Black Reconstruction in America (1935), that the record of Black politicians became clear. Against the trend of looking at their political service as disastrous and “rightfully” diminished by what Southerners called Redemption, Du Bois argues forcefully that they helped establish some of the most egalitarian political initiatives in American history. For they were ushered in during a period where democracy was expanded in ways that was as transformative as any other period for it enfranchised those who had been enslaved less than a decade earlier. For Du Bois, it would stand to reason, then, that when given the opportunity to occupy political office that they would do something different, that they would try to create a political environment that was grounded in equality instead of repression.  In challenging this hierarchy, these politicians also managed to inspire a negative tradition of “Lost Cause” historiography, which saw Black political ideas as necessarily antagonistic to a Southern way of life. This framing has created much confusion around what actually happened during the period, even inspiring perhaps the most important blockbuster in the history of American cinema, The Birth of a Nation (1915).

In challenging this hierarchy, these politicians also managed to inspire a negative tradition of “Lost Cause” historiography, which saw Black political ideas as necessarily antagonistic to a Southern way of life. This framing has created much confusion around what actually happened during the period, even inspiring perhaps the most important blockbuster in the history of American cinema, The Birth of a Nation (1915). The story that Du Bois told, then, was scarcely told, though there were some rare exceptions—a notable one being John R. Lynch’s The Facts of Reconstruction (1913)—that detailed the role that Black politicians played in developing a new vision of democracy in the United States. In more recent years, scholars like Lerone Bennett, Jr., Vincent Harding, Thomas Holt, Eric Foner, and many others have taken Du Bois as a direct inspiration in their own narrations of what truly happened during Reconstruction.

[[File:robertsmalls.jpeg|thumbnail|left|250px|Robert Smalls, state legislator and Congressman from South Carolina]]

[[File:hiramrevels.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Hiram Revels, the first Black Senator, representing Mississippi]]A number of Black politicians made their way to service in Congress. According to Du Bois, the main issue on their agenda revolved around securing “themselves civil rights, to aid education, and to settle the question of the political disabilities of their former masters.” They “advocated local improvements, including the distribution of public lands, public buildings, and appropriations for rivers and harbors…” <ref> W.E.B. Du Bois, ''Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880'' (New York: Free Press, 2000), 628-29. </ref> A lot of this work sought to use the power of the federal government to aid in the transformation of the country through redistributive policies. As such, the legacy of the politicians who served in Congress was one of imaginative economic reform. Members of that group include the first Black senator from Mississippi, Hiram Revels, as well as the aforementioned Robert Smalls and John R. Lynch, and finally, important figures such as Blanche K. Bruce, Joseph H. Rainey, and Robert C. DeLarge.

By the mid-1870s, the political context had shifted. The Northern industrialists having gotten a foothold into the economic systems of the South, began to withdraw their support for the Black vote and for these economic reforms. Along with the violence that never abated, Black politicians struggled to bring home many of the promises that their political ideas portended. With the Panic of 1873, things came to a head. By the 1876 election, much of the political vision of Black and progressive/radical politicians was on the wane and Reconstruction came to a close with the Compromise that settled that year’s election.