Discussion between Paula Giddings and Beverly Guy-Sheftall

I found the discussion on Thursday between Giddings and Guy-Sheftall to be very enlightening and thought-provoking. I enjoyed that the conversation was focused around Gidding's book and it was so interesting to learn more about Ida B. Wells, a person which I felt like I knew very little about. I was surprised and excited to learn that a woman (Wells) was the first person to begin an anti-lynching campaign in 1892. 

The point in the conversation that most stood out to me was when Giddings discussed the period of time after the Civil War in which there was Reconstruction, and how eventually that actually led into a regression. I had never really thought about the fact that the United States made so much progress towards equality between blacks and whites after the war, and then let that progress slip away for awhile, which eventually caused the civil rights movement. I found myself wondering, does progress in terms of civil or human rights ever really stick? It seems as if we periodically need to have a revolution of some kind which causes us to be re aware of certain issues. During Reconstruction, Giddings mentioned that a southern state had a black governor. How could we go from electing a black leader to then supporting Jim Crow laws, segregation and lynching. It doesn't seem to add up that we could regress so much in the progress that we made by fighting a war. I hope that not only in terms of racial equality, but also in the case of other issues that we struggle to fight for, we can find a way to make progress stick.