BTW, that phrase “Radical Reconstructionists”.
They were “radical” in the sense that they thought that Black people deserved equal rights. The most “radical” thing they did was to (regrettably temporarily) extend democracy to Black America.
And, in this, they were very similar to the original Radicals.
The “radical” thing that they were trying to achieve was to enfranchise the European working class.
Today, however, radical is almost universally used as a political epithet. Dangerous, foolish radicals.
So, a thought experiment:
Why has the apparent meaning of “radical” in politics changed so much over the years? Who was it who drove that change, and how? Whose interests were served by discrediting radicalism?
