Scholars discuss slavery

The end of slavery didn't bring about an equal society, but the years immediately following emancipation are important because they shaped modern-day democracy and labor relations, said organizers of a conference on life after slavery in the American South.

Dozens of university scholars, public school teachers, labor activists, National Park personnel and others gathered Thursday at the "Race, Labor & Citizenship in the Post-Emancipation South" conference. The event runs through Saturday at the College of Charleston and examines a critical era in U.S. history, organizers said. Some events are open to the public.

Brian Kelly, a historian and member of the conference's organizing committee, said many people consider Reconstruction -- the period from 1866 to 1877 aimed at reorganizing Southern states and readmitting them to the Union after the Civil War -- a failure because it didn't bring about equality.

But the Boston native, who now works at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, said that the period of history needs to be better understood because of the impact is continues to have today.

Reconstruction failed primarily because it was met with "overwhelming violence from white conservatives," and because Northern politicians were indifferent to that violence, Kelly said. Newly free blacks had their own ideas about what a new society should look like, he said. It included owning the land they once worked as slaves, an idea that didn't resonate with Northern politicians.

Early Reconstruction years were "the high point in American democracy," Kelly said. For example, there were more black state legislators in South Carolina in 1870 than there have been anytime since then, he said.

The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s was essentially the second phase of Reconstruction, he said, picking up where that era left off.

Bernard Powers, a history professor at the College of Charleston and a member of the conference's organizing committee, said the conference being held in Charleston is good for the city and the college. "It reinforces the centrality of the Lowcountry and South Carolina as focal points in the post-Civil War South," he said.

Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or dknich@postandcourier.com.