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 | W. E. B. Du Bois

4 months and 700 pages later… and immediately following Marx‘s Capital. As God intended. 😛 Not an easy book to constantly pick up & put back down, so I enjoyed dedicating a lot of time this break to seriously pushing through the last 300 pages. A masterpiece.

bibliothecarivs Nice! 👏 1y

breadnroses Thanks! :) @bibliothecarivs 1y

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Kaag

Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 | W. E. B. Du Bois

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Reconstruction. I‘ve known what it was since grade school but hardly knew any details. Du Bois traces the history in the southern states of the postwar years. The successes and stumbles and the unimaginable cruelty. The economic fights of laborers both black and white, the questions of land ownership, education, and the right to vote and hold office.

Kaag He puts the economic questions in socialist terms and it is really hard to argue that given the enslavement of millions that a break from at all times wasn‘t called for. A reset. A reset rather than implementing a new system. Du Bois sees a lot of good that came from Reconstruction. If it had been continued instead of rejected in the most harmful manner imaginable he sees the world as being a very different place. It‘s hard to argue his points. 2y

Kaag One of the best and most important history books I‘ve read, and for what it‘s worth I‘ve read a few hundred.

I plan to read Eric Foner‘s book on Reconstruction later this year to compare how scholarship views things decades after Du Bois‘ masterpiece. 2y

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Plaidsticks

Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 | W. E. B. Du Bois

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For awhile I thought the Civil War was a part of a positive projectile in race relations in America and have been tying to dive in to Reconstruction to figure out “where we went wrong”, I‘m sadly just beginning to realize, the end of slavery was just luck(for lack of a better term) and we were, and still are, shit. #audiobook