ABSTRACT
“The Press in Transition: From Reconstruction to the Gilded Age” describes the triumphs and failures of the press during Reconstruction, focusing on Ida B. Wells’ The Red Record as a landmark piece of journalism. It opens with a narration of Horace Greeley’s failed campaign for president in 1872, juxtaposed with Wells’ crusade against lynching, and it shows how Reconstruction journalism bridged traditional models of publishing popularized before the Civil War into a new wave of sensational content fueled by technological development at the end of the nineteenth century. Using materials from this chapter, students should know why the Reconstruction era introduced important precedents in the role of the press as an agent for social change. They should identify key problems both highlighted and ignored by the press leaders and politicians of the era, and they should be able to explain why Ida B. Wells deserves credit for taking a particularly brave stance as a writer in exposing the abhorrent practice of lynching. Key words, names, and phrases associated with Chapter 6 include: Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republicans, and the 1872 election; Ida B. Wells, lynching, The Red Record; Mark Twain and the Gilded Age; and Horatio Alger and the American Dream.
