This is a free excerpt of Episode 5. To hear more, join Slate Plus --> slate.com/reconstructionThe collapse of the antebellum Southern legal order left freedpeople exposed to violence from whites desperately trying to re-establish racial hierarchies. Some black people tried to defend themselves, acquiring weapons and forming militias. How common—and how effective—was that strategy?In Episode 5 of Reconstruction: A Slate Academy, Rebecca Onion and Jamelle Bouie are joined by Kidada...

This is free excerpt of Episode 4. To hear the entire series, join Slate Plus --> slate.com/reconstructionFormerly enslaved black Americans held a majority of the seats in South Carolina’s state Legislature in 1868, and no other state elected as many black Americans during the Reconstruction era. How successfully did these politicians wield their newfound power? And compared to other eras, was political corruption really as endemic as white Americans claimed? In Episode 4 of...

This is a free preview of Reconstruction, a Slate Academy. Learn more at Slate.com/Reconstruction.Episode 1: Experiments in Land-owning: Davis Bend and Cameron PlaceSome freedpeople ended up owning parcels of the land they had worked when enslaved. Some formed intentional communities to farm it. By the end of Reconstruction, most of them had no land to their names.Amy Murrell Taylor is the author of The Divided Family in Civil War America.