Reconstruction was the nation’s first great experiment in biracial democracy, with hundreds of thousands of black men able to vote for the first time, and significant numbers holding elective office. Largely for that reason, Southern planters led coups against local governments that supported Reconstruction, and went on to bar blacks and many poor whites from voting and to construct a system of Jim Crow racial exclusion.

The story of Reconstruction remains a rich and troubling one for a nation that prefers stories of progress over those of regression. It reminds us of the centrality of race-based slavery to our nation’s history; of the idealism of those, white and black, who sought to build a society based on racial equality upon the ashes of slavery; and of the violent overthrow of the experiment in biracial democracy. More broadly it reminds us that rights we sometimes take for granted can be taken away.

Nevertheless, Reconstruction often disappears from our national story. Historians long characterized it as a failure, disseminating myths of corruption or of African-American incapacity. Over the last half-century, scholars have overturned that interpretation, noting the extraordinary vitality and promise of Reconstruction, but this knowledge has too infrequently reached the public. Many Americans know nothing at all about the period.

A National Park Service monument to Reconstruction in Beaufort would be a significant step toward commemorating this crucial part of the nation’s history. After the Union victory on Port Royal Sound in 1861, the scenic town of Beaufort and the surrounding Sea Islands was a rehearsal for Reconstruction. Former slaves on nearby St. Helena and Hilton Head Islands attended the Penn School established by Northern reformers, established religious services at Brick Baptist Church, created self-governing communities like Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island and served alongside Harriet Tubman in the nearby Combahee ferry raid, an 1863 foray into Confederate territory that liberated hundreds of slaves.

In alliance with some white Carolinians, they elected a war hero and former slave, Robert Smalls, to the state constitutional convention of 1868 and then to five terms in Congress. Smalls lived long enough to see the end of Reconstruction, defending civil and voting rights at the 1895 state constitutional convention that disfranchised African-Americans, and maintaining a rare biracial alliance in Beaufort until his death in 1915.