That Dunning guy.

Yesterday in class we read a packet about the views of William Archibald Dunning and John hope Franklin. They had two totally different views about the reconstruction period post civil war. At first I thought what does this have to do with me.I have my own opinion. But as I read I soon realized that it have to do with me.
William Archibald Dunning was an American historian who founded the Dunning School of Reconstruction historiography at Columbia University, where he had graduated in 1881. Between 1886 and 1903 he taught history at Columbia, and was named a professor in 1904. Dunning and his followers condemned white Southerners who did not stand with the Confederacy during the Civil War and who joined the Republican Party after the war. White Southern Republicans who did not identify with the goals of former plantation owners as Scalawags. They also referred to Northern whites who moved to the south after the war as Carpetbaggers. Both were derisive terms that Dunning and his followers popularized. Dunning believed that the reconstruction process was not successful because of the corruption there was through out the political parties.
John Hope Franklin is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History. Professor Franklin's numerous publications include The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, Reconstruction After the Civil War, and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North. In contrast to Dunnings belief, Franklin believes that reconstruction was a success. He thinks that it set the stepping stone for the civil rights movement.
I agree with both of them. Dunning's belief in a way true. The more rights blacks got the more the state government tried to limit those rights. That wasn't the plan. However with blacks rights getting limited that helped those in the civil rights movement. Although blacks could and things they couldn't eat in restaurants and couldn't go to school with whites. So both arguments, in my opinion, are true. Also their different opinions stem from their different eras. Dunning was there( not physically] and Franklin was in the 50's&&60's.
By the end of the class i was quite interested. I wonder what the class thinks. Hopefully we discuss in class tomorrow.!