W. E. B. Du Bois · Politics

Black Reconstruction: Rewriting History

In a monumental 1935 work, Du Bois overturned the reigning history of Reconstruction, recasting the freedpeople not as the ruin of the South but as the heroes of a brief, real, betrayed experiment in interracial democracy.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Du Bois rewrote the history of Reconstruction against the grain of the scholarship of his day. In your own words, explain his ‘general strike’ thesis and why he argued Reconstruction failed not because Black people were unfit but because of a counter-revolution of property.

Leads to Karl Marx.

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