Even with the many successes of the black freedom movement in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the betrayal of Reconstruction haunts American democracy.  The nation still lives with the competing legacies of democracy and authoritarianism bequeathed by the rise and fall of the Second American Republic.  The overturning of an interracial democracy and the unrestrained triumph of capitalism and imperialism in the United States created a political thermidor that ultimately affected other groups as well -- indigenous people, women, immigrants, farmers, and workers -- in short, all Americans and democracy itself.  Until the second Reconstruction of American democracy in the 1960s, which unleashed other progressive social movements as well, the United States was not a democracy but a racist, authoritarian state comparable to European colonies in Asia and African and its lingering vestige, South Africa. 

Our own era is one of renewed challenges to American democracy, including the revival of voter suppression, the overturning of women's and gay rights, unprecedented economic inequality, and a resurgent domestic and global authoritarianism that defies democratic governance. 

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Today, unregulated capitalism threatens not only democracy but the very existence of human beings and a livable planet. 

The Rise and Fall of The Second American Republic

Manisha Sinha