Black Reconstruction in America

Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois (Free Press, 1935) Countering contemporary stories of Reconstruction as a failure, Du Bois’s very thorough history demonstrates not only the immense strides made in the years immediately following the end of the Civil War, but also that the architects of that change were the newly freed slaves themselves. Beginning with a general strike, when enslaved people quit their work and joined the advancing Union armies, through to the establishment of hundreds of public schools, Black Americans pursued a worker-led democracy with public services open to all. That vision was felled by white Americans in both the North and South, who could not bring themselves either to acknowledge Black Americans’ contributions nor to share the economic fruits of their labor. The final chapter of the book reflects on the propaganda, a mere fifty years after the end of the war, that had already displaced a story of Black Americans’ miraculous efforts with one…

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