Black Reconstruction In America

Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 (1935) by W.E.B. du Bois is a material political economic analysis of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era. In Black Reconstruction, Du Bois analyzes The Role of Black Americans in Reconstruction and The Civil War and Reconstruction as a Form of Class Struggle. The work critiques the mainstream narrative that Black Americans led corrupt and dysfunctional Reconstruction-era state governments to counter the white supremacist myths that predominated in the 1930s, reflecting The Importance of Challenging the “Propaganda of History.”  

Du Bois (1868-1963) was a leading Black historian, writer, and civil rights activist. Black Reconstruction is widely considered his magnum opus and a foundational work in Civil War and Reconstruction era history. 

This guide uses the 2017 Routledge edition of Black Reconstruction in America.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions and discussion of anti-Black racism and enslavement, and a brief reference to sexual violence.

Language Note: This guide utilizes the term “Black American” to refer to people whom Du Bois calls “Negro,” which was in more common usage in the 1930s. The source text quotes those who used the n-word to highlight and illustrate the virulence of historic anti-Black racism. This term is not reproduced in this guide.

Summary

In Chapter 1, “The Black Worker,” Du Bois provides a brief history of Black people in the United States, their population over time, and their experience in enslavement. He characterizes them as workers, emphasizing their labor and their lack of control over their labor as an early and implicit contradiction to the American ideals of democracy and equality. He calls this class “the Black proletariat.”

In Chapter 2, “The White Worker,” Du Bois provides a brief history of working-class white people in the United States. He emphasizes the role of waves of immigration from Europe in shaping the American labor movement, and how white labor leaders failed to see Black workers as allies in the struggle against the capitalist class.

Chapter 3, “The Planter,” is a brief history of the Southern landowning class, the white planters. He describes the aristocratic culture of this 7% of the Southern population and their relationships with Black enslaved people, the white proletariat, and the Northern elite in the years prior to the Civil War.

In Chapter 4, “The General Strike,” Du Bois describes the outbreak of the Civil War and the role of Black Americans in that conflict. He argues that the Civil War was fought to preserve the institution of enslavement in the South. During the war, enslaved Black Americans fled their plantations in the South, a process Du Bois characterizes as a “general strike.” This deprived the South of the agricultural labor it required to maintain the war effort while supplementing the Union’s labor pool.

Chapter 5, “The Coming of the Lord,” covers the final years of the Civil War and in particular the role of Black Americans as soldiers for the Union. Du Bois argues that Black soldiers were essential to the Union victory as they provided much-needed reinforcements for the Union Army. He argues that Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation not out of moral clarity but rather out of military and economic necessity.

Chapter 6, “Looking Backward,” covers the first few months of the Reconstruction era following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 21st, 1865, a few weeks after the Civil War ended. Du Bois describes how the South attempted to reinstate enslavement by another name through Black Codes which limited Black civil rights.

In Chapter 7, “Looking Forward,” Du Bois covers the class struggles between white Northern capitalists, the planter class, poor white Southerners, and freed Black people that would come to define the majority of the Reconstruction era. He describes how President Andrew Johnson attempted to block many Reconstruction-era civil rights efforts led by Congress, only to be overridden. He identifies how Republican Northern capitalists allied with the “abolition-democracy” to support Black suffrage because they wanted more political control than the Southern Democrats.

In Chapter 8, “Transubstantiation of a Poor White,” Du Bois argues that Andrew Johnson is a key example of a poor white Southerner who lost sight of breaking up the white planter class oligarchy when faced with the prospect of Black Americans benefiting from the Reconstruction process.

In Chapter 9, “The Price of Disaster,” Du Bois describes the material economic situation in the South following the Civil War. He notes the incredible poverty, loss of life, and destruction that the war had wrought. He details the battles over reparations and the Freedmen’s Bureau, or the efforts to provide material and legal support to recently freed Black Americans. He criticizes the government for not reappropriating and distributing more land to Black Americans.

In Chapters 10 through 13, Du Bois details the facts and figures of Reconstruction-era governments. He uses government records from every state to describe the role of Black Americans in the creation of new state constitutions and state governments, the amount of debt of these governments and the reason behind this debt, the political factions in these state governments, and the role of white leadership in some of the biggest failures of these governments.

In Chapter 14, “Counter-Revolution of Property,” Du Bois describes the reactionary movement against the efforts to redistribute property and capital and to provide support for recently freed Black Americans at the end of Reconstruction, leading to the withdrawal of federal support for Reconstruction. While Northern capitalists initially supported Black suffrage, they eventually came to strike deals with the white planter class. In exchange for stable access to Southern markets and industrial development, Northern capitalists agreed to withdraw federal support for Black Americans in the South. This led to a rollback of Black civil rights throughout the South, leading to the restoration of white Democratic political power and capital control.

Chapter 15, “Founding the Public School,” describes the role of Black Americans in the Reconstruction era in creating public school systems throughout the South. Du Bois sees the public school system as a key positive legacy of the Reconstruction era and Black leadership during that time period.

In Chapter 16, “Back Toward Slavery,” Du Bois describes how white terrorist groups like the KKK and White League used violence and intimidation to prevent Black Americans from exercising their civil rights. He illustrates how these groups worked in tandem with white capitalists to reinstate economic, political, and social control over the Black working class in the South.

In the final chapter, Chapter 17, “The Propaganda of History,” Du Bois critiques the methodology of white historians and the mainstream narratives about the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. He accuses them of crafting narratives that support white supremacist interpretations of the era to minimize and denigrate Black leadership and contributions, while overlooking evidence that contradicts their claims. He ends on a call for historians to use factual, “scientific” approaches to historical research and argues that a true understanding of this historical period can inform ongoing labor and civil rights struggles.