WASHINGTON – Conservatives sometimes accuse the academic left of ignoring the good in American history and emphasizing the horrors.

But in some respects, the telling of the American story does not focus enough on the horrors.

American history texts dealt with the run up to the Civil War, then the war itself, then the failure of Reconstruction, before moving on to the Gilded Age and progressive reform. But the failure of Reconstruction was not just a disembodied fact but a planned and ruthless act of sabotage. As Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s new book, “Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” effectively reminds us, the period of history following the Civil War involved a violent campaign to reverse the social, political and economic outcomes of the conflict. And this effort – which southerners called “Redemption” – was successful in almost every respect.

With the defeat of the Confederacy, the federal government’s enforcement of civil rights was beginning to work a revolution. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans registered to vote and eventually elected an estimated 2,000 black officials at every level of government. Families divided by slavery were reunited. Workers transitioned into a wage system. The process was difficult but hopeful.

The white south, however, was having none of it. A broad counterattack was mounted to undo the work of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. This involved a campaign of murder and intimidation to disenfranchise black Republicans and the imposition of sharecropping and convict labor that effectively recreated the conditions of slavery. By 1875, white rule was reestablished in all but three southern states. At first, Republicans such as President Ulysses S. Grant tried to help southern blacks through armed interventions by federal troops. But this policy proved politically unpopular and was abandoned.

The re-imposition of white rule was a bloody, unpunished historical crime. Between 1868 and 1871, an estimated 400 African Americans were lynched across the South. The killers – often roving bands of former Confederate soldiers – acted with total impunity. By 1890, Ben Tillman, who would serve as governor of South Carolina, was crowing: “The triumph of Democracy and white supremacy over mongrelism and anarchy is most complete.”

Gates recounts the massive, seemingly coordinated betrayal of black citizens following Redemption by every white institution. How the Supreme Court gutted civil rights protections. How the scientific community justified white supremacy with bogus research. How white churches ignored or blessed oppression. How the world of advertising adopted demeaning black stereotypes to sell soap and cereal. How the world of movies and literature popularized the myth of the Lost Cause, in which Reconstruction was a period of carpetbagger oppression and black people really longed for the security of the plantation.

Gates is especially insightful in revealing how black people, after their constitutional rights were stolen, attempted to reassert their dignity in non-political ways. Through Booker T. Washington’s version of self-help. Or by cultivating the achievements of W.E.B Du Bois’ “talented tenth.” Or through the artistic excellence of the Harlem Renaissance. Or through pan-African pride.

Ultimately, Gates argues that Frederick Douglass got closest to the truth – that there is no path to pride and equality that does not include political power, particularly voting rights. This was the main theme of the NAACP and, eventually, of Martin Luther King Jr. It is a tribute to the importance of justice as the first human need.

The denial of justice recounted by “Stony the Road” was every bit as bad as apartheid. It was not just racism, but the systematic attempt to destroy – through violence, threats and mockery – the dignity, political rights and social standing of blacks in America. It was far worse than anything I was taught in history classes. Yet only by knowing this period can we understand how white supremacy became the broadly accepted, and sadly durable, ideology of white America.

Michael Gerson is a columnist for The Washington Post.