The Third Reconstruction

How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear

By: William J. Barber II, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Narrated by: Chase Bradley

A modern-day civil rights champion tells the stirring story of how he helped start a movement to bridge America’s racial divide.

Over the summer of 2013, the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II led more than a hundred thousand people at rallies across North Carolina to protest restrictions to voting access and an extreme makeover of state government. These protests—the largest state government–focused civil disobedience campaign in American history—came to be known as Moral Mondays and have since blossomed in states as diverse as Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York.

At a time when divide-and-conquer politics are exacerbating racial strife and economic inequality, Rev. Barber offers an impassioned, historically grounded argument that Moral Mondays are hard evidence of an embryonic Third Reconstruction in America.

The first Reconstruction briefly flourished after Emancipation, and the second Reconstruction ushered in meaningful progress in the civil rights era. But both were met by ferocious reactionary measures that severely curtailed, and in many cases rolled back, racial and economic progress. This Third Reconstruction is a profoundly moral awakening of justice-loving people united in a fusion coalition powerful enough to reclaim the possibility of democracy—even in the face of corporate-financed extremism.

In this memoir of how Rev. Barber and allies as diverse as progressive Christians, union members, and immigration-rights activists came together to build a coalition, he offers a trenchant analysis of race-based inequality and a hopeful message for a nation grappling with persistent racial and economic injustice. Rev. Barber writes movingly—and pragmatically—about how he laid the groundwork for a state-by-state movement that unites black, white, and brown, rich and poor, employed and unemployed, gay and straight, documented and undocumented, religious and secular. Only such a diverse fusion movement, Rev. Barber argues, can heal our nation’s wounds and produce public policy that is morally defensible, constitutionally consistent, and economically sane. The Third Reconstruction is both a blueprint for movement building and an inspiring call to action from the twenty-first century’s most effective grassroots organizer.

Great book, technical problem

Excellent book-- a statement of moral imperative (with relevant historical illustrations) rooted in transformative experiences, and a clarion call.

A technical issue is preventing me from giving it a 5 star rating overall-- the text of the afterword is also randomly dropped into the middle of the last chapter, and I can't tell whether it is simply annoyingly inserted or whether it overwrites part of that chapter.

Inspiring, Awakening, Relevant!

This book should be read by all high school seniors. Every American should read these words and take heed. Maybe then we could move "Forward together! Not one step back!"

Deserved better narration

I’m about 2/3 through and here’s my running list of mispronunciations:
North Carolinians (the author is a well-known local so this was particularly awful)
Legislature
Septuagenarian
Immorality (come on, obviously “immortality” was wrong in context!)
Mettle
Koch
Evangelism (the author is a pastor!!)

I know mistakes happen, but this is just sloppy. What a shame. This book is important and deserved better.

Great book. Indefensibly bad audio version.

The publisher and author should have rejected this recording. It's an important book and America needs a better audio edition than this one. Riddled with pronunciation errors (North Carolinian (not North Carolinan!), legislature, half the references to HKonJ, the *last name Koch* that is essential to the book). Southern accent appears and disappears. There's also a giant editing error in the middle and several pages are re-read.

Must Read

If you are a breathing human being you need to read this book. This is for everyone. The stay at home parents. The working parents. The rich and poor. The disempowered and the empowered.