Black Reconstruction In America

Du Bois provides a historical summary of Black workers in the United States and their economic and cultural roles from enslavement to Emancipation in 1863. He begins by using statistics to describe the heterogeneity of the Black population of the United States in the 19th century. Black Americans were not all enslaved, nor were they all from Africa. Many were of mixed race. They were “integrated into modern industry” (2), primarily the production of cotton. Around this “intricate” economic system arose a tense, unstable cultural system, one that included waves of white European immigrants who arrived in the US over the course of the century.

Du Bois notes that many American colonies and territories, both in the North and South, had allowed property-owning free Black men to vote until the late 18th or early 19th centuries. For instance, Georgia allowed Black suffrage until 1761. He argues that the increasing restrictions on free Black men were a reaction to the idea that “he contradicted and undermined [enslavement]” (5).

Du Bois compares the plight of the “ordinary worker” with that of an enslaved person. While he recognizes certain similarities, such as being “compelled in his movements and his possibilities” (6), he argues that enslavement was of a different order, as it included “the enforced personal feeling of inferiority” (6).