Today's struggle for racial justice — and the backlash against it — is part of a new era of Reconstruction, says historian Peniel Joseph

This segment was rebroadcast on Jan.3, 2023. Click here for that audio. 

In his new book, Peniel Joseph writes that there have been three periods of Reconstruction in American history. First, the post-Civil War period brought the end of slavery and the fight for Black citizenship and voting rights. The second Reconstruction came a century later, during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Joseph argues that we are in a third era of Reconstruction now, that began with the election of former President Barack Obama in 2008. Joseph is a professor of history and public affairs at the University of Texas Austin and the author of the new book "The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-first Century." He joins Here & Now's Scott Tong.

By Peniel Joseph

Excerpted from "The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-first Century" by Peniel Joseph. Copyright © 2022 by Peniel Joseph. Republished with permission of Basic Books.