Streamed live on April 16, 2025

Speakers:
Daryl V. Atkinson – Co-Founder and Director, Forward Justice
Barrett Holmes Pitner – Philosopher, Journalist, Educator; Author, The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America

Moderator: Etienne Toussaint – Associate Professor of Law, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law

This conversation highlighted how Reconstruction’s revolutionary achievements which are often mischaracterized as failures, remain overlooked in legal education and public discourse. The speakers examined Reconstruction’s relevance today, particularly in movements for racial justice, voting rights, and criminal justice reform. They also introduced Reconstructionism as a legal and philosophical framework to counter originalism, emphasizing equality, multiracial democracy, and transformative justice.

Highlights:

• North Carolina’s 1868 Reconstruction Constitution as a way of restoring voting rights for formerly incarcerated people, invoking the ban on property qualifications

• Reconstruction thinking is iterative → abolishing barriers (abolition) must be followed by rebuilding (Reconstruction)

• Regressive movements seek freedom from marginalized groups while Reconstructionist movements seek freedom with others through solidarity, shared rights, and inclusive democracy

• Modern threats like the Trump administration’s mass deportations echo post-Reconstruction-era regression

• To understand Reconstruction, it must be framed as movement and model for friendship, solidarity, and justice

Streamed live on March 5, 2025

Speakers:
Sheryll Cashin – Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice, Georgetown Law
Etienne Toussaint – Associate Professor of Law, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law
Lucien Ferguson – Drinan Visiting Assistant Professor, Boston College Law School

Moderator: Barrett Holmes Pitner – Philosopher, Journalist, Educator; Author, The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America

This conversation emphasized how Reconstruction represented America’s first attempt to build a multiracial democracy, enshrining principles of equality and federal enforcement through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Despite its achievements in areas like voting rights and public education, Reconstruction was systematically dismantled by Supreme Court rulings such as Plessy v. Ferguson, violent backlash, and federal abandonment, leaving a legacy of unfinished work. Today, it is important to learn about and teach Reconstruction in order to understand the social and structural tensions that arise when working to create a more equitable and just American society.

Highlights:

• Highlighting the fact that “equal protection under the law” did not exist in the U.S. Constitution until the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

• Curriculum gaps in law schools and K-12 education obscure Reconstruction’s more radical achievements such as biracial legislatures and progressive taxation

• Solutions → use graphic novels such as Defiant: Robert Smalls and stories of Black and white allies like Robert Smalls (Black legislator) and Albion Tourgée (white lawyer)

• Myths like the one that Reconstruction failed due to Black incompetence, persist in textbooks and should be countered with data on Black legislator’s achievements from the time period

• Support movement lawyering → lawyers should partner with communities and grassroots groups, echoing Reconstruction-era advocacy through institutions like the Freedmen’s Bureau

Streamed live on February 5, 2025

Speakers:
Barrett Holmes Pitner – Philosopher, Journalist, Educator; Author, The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America
Aziz Rana – J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government at Boston College Law School; Author, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them

Moderator: Etienne Toussaint – Associate Professor of Law, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law

This conversation explored how the U.S. Constitution’s structural flaws perpetuate inequality and undermine democracy. The system’s design, including the Electoral College, unrepresentative Senate, and rigid amendment process, enables minority rule while making meaningful reform nearly impossible. These built-in limitations create a paradox where the Constitution both fails to deliver on its democratic promises and shields those in power from accountability. During Reconstruction, this cycle was broken when it was realized that legal rights alone were insufficient. Continuing Reconstruction requires moving beyond reverence for the document itself to focus on building the collective power necessary to reshape governance.

Highlights:

• Credal constitutionalism → the idealized view of the Constitution as fulfilling universal equality masks its anti-democratic features and origins in compromise on issues like slavery

• The current crisis of President Trump’s executive overreach reflects both violations of constitutional principles and the system’s incentives for lawlessness

• Reconstruction was an attempt to build a multiracial democracy, but its erasure during Jim Crow and periods of Regression, perpetuated a cycle where theoretical ideals overshadow experiential justice

• Democracy requires “freedom with” (collective flourishing) over “freedom from” (individual detachment)

• Originalism, as a judicial doctrine, reinforces a static, exclusionary vision of the Constitution, ignoring Reconstruction’s expansive view through the introduction of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

Streamed live on December 17, 2024

Speakers:
Barrett Holmes Pitner – Philosopher, Journalist, Educator; Author, The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America
James R. May – Dignity Rights Scholar; Richard S. Righter Distinguished Professor of Law, Washburn University School of Law

Moderator: Etienne Toussaint – Associate Professor of Law, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law

This conversation examined Reconstruction as a pivotal but often misunderstood era that established civil rights, citizenship, and voting rights for Black Americans, but was undermined by violent backlash. The speakers contrasted Reconstructionism with originalism, highlighting cycles of progress and regression throughout American history. They also linked the ideals of Reconstruction to modern struggles for justice, urging bolder legal and educational approaches to fulfill its unfinished promise.

Highlights:

• Reconstruction’s ideals (multiracial democracy, land ownership, education, etc.) were revolutionary but were undermined by systemic violence and legal reversals

• Pitner’s theory of the American Cycle → democracy clashes with ethnocide (cultural destruction and the Founding era), followed by movements to abolish oppression (Abolitionist movement of 1800s and Civil Rights Movement), leading to periods of advancement (Reconstruction, Obama’s presidency) followed by regression (Redemption, MAGA movement)

• Modern movements to restrict voting rights or birthright citizenship echo what happened after the first Reconstruction

• During Reconstruction, Black Americans asserted their dignity through political participation, land ownership, and community building as a way to seek recognition as equal members of society

• During periods of Regression, we see an inversion of language where dignity is weaponized and used as a way to positively remember Redeemers through things like Confederate monuments

• Reconstruction was not a failure but an unfinished project that offers a roadmap for addressing today’s inequities