Editor's Note: The Questions That Most Need Asking

The Reconstruction period has been a topic for The Atlantic across the centuries. This special issue, edited by our senior editor Vann R. Newkirk II, working alongside our editor-at-large, Cullen Murphy, and our managing editor John Swansburg, is meant to examine the enduring consequences of Reconstruction’s tragic fall at a moment—­yet another moment—when the cause of racial progress faces sustained pressure. The idea for this issue emerged from a conversation I had not long ago with Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Bunch is, among other things, a stupendous builder, a conscientious American patriot, and an impresario of memory. He is also a scholar of the Freedmen’s Bureau archives, and the author of a moving article about the bureau’s work.