John Hope Franklin

"Franklin's Reconstruction After the Civil War (1961) led the final charge against the retreating apologists of the Dunning school that had held sway during most of the century. The monograph buttressed W.E.B. Du Bois's contention that claims of black misrule in the South were largely historical agitprop and demonstrated that Reconstruction governments accomplished positive educational and criminal-justice reforms. The book also returned to the role of Southern white violence in overthrowing Reconstruction — not merely as an episodic and limited factor but one that was indispensable."