Books: Non-Fiction

We’ve Been Here Before: Lessons for Surviving in an Age of White Backlash

A historian’s guide to understanding Reconstruction and the lessons it offers for navigating our own fraught political moment.

Time Periods: All US History
Levels: Adult, High School

In the wake of a shocking presidential election, historian Kellie Carter Jackson came to a simple but powerful realization: We have stood at a similar crossroads before, in the years following the Civil War, the era of Reconstruction. Would democracy extend to all Americans? Or would white supremacy prevail?

In We’ve Been Here Before: Lessons for Surviving in an Age of White Backlash, Carter Jackson skillfully transforms history into a political guidebook. Throughout Reconstruction, every political crisis — from the pardon of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the rise of the KKK — sparked resistance. From this tumultuous history, there are lessons to be learned: the importance of being a good neighbor, the power of electoral politics, and how to survive in a country that meets progress with violence and bigotry.

Striking and sobering, We’ve Been Here Before is a road map for enduring our current political storm. [Adapted from publishers’ description.]

ISBN: 9781541608795 | Seal Press (CA)

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