Douglas egerton presents a history of america during reconstruction. He reports that during this time close to 1500 africanamericans assumed public office, including the first africanamerican u. S. Senators, hiram revels and joseph hayne rainey, and jasper j. Wright who sat on south carolinas supreme court. This is about 50 minutes. Thank you so much. Its really nice to be here. I went to graduate school in washington in the 1980s and its always nice to be back. Its my second appearance at politics and prose. Hello . So its good to be back. I was asked to talk for about 30 minutes and that the lease is time for question and discussion and maybe disagreements. Let me start with a story. Win the war ended a lot of black soldiers were serving with the u. S. Cd, United States code troops. They decide to stay put where they were in the south. Some had working backgrounds in the north, underpaid, but no compelling reason to go back home. The 180,000 blacks who served with the armed forces, 1