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David Blight on the Civil War in American memory

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Last reunion of Becker County Civil War Veterans
This photograph, from approximately 1920, is marked as the "last reunion of Becker County Civil War Veterans."
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

On Memorial Day, historian David Blight explores the immediate aftermath of the Civil War: efforts to fulfill the promise of emancipation, repairing the sectional divide between the north and south and the ongoing racial divide. He spoke in 2013 at the Minnesota Historical Society's "History Forum" in St. Paul.

Blight is a history professor at at Yale University and the author of "American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era," and "Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory."