How do you define American progress? Manisha Sinha, this year’s Franklin & Marshall Mueller Fellow, will expand on the topic in a Feb. 26 Common Hour lecture.

The Mueller Fellowship Endowment was established in 1980 to bring distinguished national speakers to the College for conversations with the campus community.

Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and former president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. 

Sinha’s talk will focus on her latest book, “The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.” 

“I think it is too simple to claim that American history is either only the history of racism or of linear progress. Both ideas are too simple and all-encompassing,” Sinha says. “In fact, the history of the United States shows us how progressive and reactionary forces have always battled each other over slavery and racial equality today.”

"We can never assume that the achievements of the past are permanent, and every American should work to secure them."

Manisha Sinha

What is the focus of your lecture?

My talk will be an overview of my book that looks at the tremendous achievements of Reconstruction in establishing our modern interracial democracy, and then its tragic overthrow during a long period of time that gave us Jim Crow, racist violence and disfranchisement. 

What inspired you to research and write about this particular time period? 

Growing up in India, I was very interested in the way Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used Mahatma Gandhi's ideas of non-violent resistance and the connections between race, democracy and citizenship. When I came to the U.S., I worked my way back to the history of slavery and became a specialist in the histories of slavery, abolition, the Civil War and Reconstruction – a 19th century historian.

What has America done well since Reconstruction? What does the country still need to work on?

The Civil Rights Movement, in many ways, redeemed the promises of Reconstruction. Many of the laws passed during this time ending segregation and black disfranchisement were simply enforcing Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments and civil rights laws. But now, there is a backlash to the Civil Rights-era laws and ideas, and we still need to uphold the promise of American democracy and equal citizenship for all. We can never assume that the achievements of the past are permanent, and every American should work to secure them. 

This free event is supported by the Mueller Fellow Committee and Reckoning with Lancaster. It will be held in Adams Auditorium on Thursday, Feb. 26 at 11:30 a.m.

Publisher: Liveright