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Thomas ZimmerJune 3, 2026 at 10:15 AM EDT

In light of the Roberts Court emphatically clarifying that the voting rights era really is OVER and that the nation’s laws and constitution can henceforth only be used to *curtail* the right of minorities to vote, I am reposting my series of essays on the history of multiracial democracy:

Chris Geidner06/03/26

BREAKING: In an unsigned, per curiam opinion on the shadow docket, the SCOTUS conservatives allow Alabama to use a congressional map held repeatedly by a lower court to have been enacted with discriminatory intent.

Over the past month, I wrote a series of long essays that can hopefully serve as a framework for how to think about the long struggle over how much democracy, and for whom, there should be in this country – and help us put the end of the civil rights era in historical perspective. Part I focuses on how young and fragile multiracial democracy actually is, on why Reconstruction is such a crucial historical reference point especially now, and what lessons and implications its rise and fall offer as we are now facing the second “Redemption.”

I focused on outlining the basic facts in this piece. Reconstruction should play a far more prominent role in the nation’s collective imagination. I think once people engage with the empirical reality, they quickly understand the enormous historical significance. The fate of the first Reconstruction is such a crucial reference point. One implication is that democratic progress – any attempt at leveling existing hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth – will inevitably lead to a massive reactionary countermobilization. Too often, a timid class of political leaders makes avoiding such “backlash” their overriding concern. But backlash politics, driven by a logic of defeatist appeasement and pre-emptive abandonment of justice and equality, is guaranteed to stifle egalitarian achievements. If “backlash” and “polarization” are inevitably the price to be paid for equality, we might as well do it right, make a proper push. Piecemeal reforms and half-measures are easily dismantled, they will only leave the people who will suffer most from the countermobilization defenseless. Multiracial democracy has never advanced through appeasement and persuasion. America’s first attempt to extend the democratic promise beyond white people was successful where and when the political coalition behind Reconstruction was willing to impose it against resistance. The promise of Reconstruction was left unfulfilled. The experiment didn’t last. That is another painful implication: No right, no democratic achievement is ever safe. No progress is irrevocable. History is not destined to move in a progressive direction. That, however, does not mean progress is impossible. Even as the reactionary entrenchment won in the late nineteenth century, the fight was not over. Ultimately, courageous people achieved marvelous things: A Second Reconstruction, codified in the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Part II focuses on that Second Reconstruction. I reflect on why the civil rights legislation of the 1960s had such a transformative impact, explore the immediate impact of the VRA – and examine the decades-long reactionary countermobilization that has just ended the civil rights era.

I wrote this one angry: Angry about the tireless efforts to sanitize the discourse, about the fact that we are constantly asked to come up with exculpatory tales, to please not call those pursuing a political project of re-segregation racists - so mean! so “divisive”! - or segregationists. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, America was not a democracy. It was certainly not what we, in widely accepted parlance today, call “democracy.” It absolutely had no reasonable claim to be considered a *multiracial* democracy. The civil rights legislation of the 1960s fundamentally changed the structural conditions shaping the struggle to democratize America. It was fueled by an understanding that the inequalities of American life were the result of discriminatory intent and structures. The crowning achievements of the civil rights struggle, which had codified America’s Second Reconstruction, are no more. The struggle is not over. But the battle for democratic freedom will now have to be waged under far more difficult conditions. Finally, Part III: An attempt to take stock of where America stands one month after the end of the voting rights era. The country is facing an escalating representation crisis, a spiraling crisis of legitimacy, and an accelerating disintegration into two incompatible Americas.

All three of these essays are among the longest I have ever published on Democracy Americana. It is my attempt to really put into perspective what a profoundly disturbing moment in U.S. history we are witnessing. I’d be grateful for your support – please consider subscribing:

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