Reconstruction Movies & TV
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Using dramatic reenactments, archival photographs, and historical texts, the History Channel presents an unsettling glimpse of the world of the post-Civil War South. The film is focused squarely on the crimes of racial hate and vengeance that plagued former slaves and those sympathetic to the Radical Republican agenda.
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In some ways, this film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood could be described as a modern day Birth of a Nation. Josey Wales remains loyal to the Confederacy after its defeat in the Civil War and utilizes unlawful means to avenge the death and destruction he witnesses.
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Based on the bestselling novel by Georgia-born author Margaret Matchell, this hit Hollywood romance about the American South during and after the Civil War did a great deal, like Birth of a Nation, to shape 20th-century attitudes about race and the legacies of slavery, the war, and Radical Reconstruction.
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The hero of director D.W. Griffith's cinematic masterpiece—a record-breaking, box-office hit from the early-20th century—is a white Southerner who helps form the Ku Klux Klan to free the South from the supposed tyranny of Reconstruction-era Blacks. The film, with its electrifying performances, spectacular special effects, and provocative story, captivated white audiences and drew vigorous protests from African-American civil rights organizations such as the NAACP.