Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860 – 1880. 1935. New York: Free Press, 1935.

Summary:
DuBois’ Black Reconstruction is a political statement: a stance against the “False histories” that have ignored the central role of African-Americans during the Civil War and, especially, during reconstruction. He writes in his conclusion: “In order to paint the South as a martyr to inescapable fate, to make the North the magnanimous emancipator, and to ridicule the Negro as the impossible joke in the whole development, we have in fifty years, by libel, innuendo and silence, so completely misstated and obliterated the history of the Negro in America and his relation to its work and government that today it is almost unknown.” The covering of the African American experience has political repercussions and turns the study of history from a tool to guide mankind to a tool of propaganda to serve political and personal interests. It was the black worker, DuBois argues, that was the underlying cause of the civil war, because the foundation of the economic order in America, especially the south, was rested upon the backs of black workers. Dubois places the African American at the center of the story. He is the laborer to which the economic system of the south is built upon. His transition and role during and after the war is key to understanding the Civil War and Reconstruction. “Out of the exploitation of the dark proletariat,” DuBois writes, “comes the surplus value” of the controlling nations. African Americans also played a fundamental role during the war (200,000 as soldiers, another 300,000 as laborers). Furthermore, after the war, the question of the “black” worker drove and inspired the deeper questions of democracy in America, as it was a “test of the nation’s real belief in democratic institutions.” Ultimately, Dubois shows how, for brief moments, reconstruction presented the best of what democracy could and should be in America, only to be subverted by economic interests.

Historiography: More recent arguments (Foner and ideology, Johnson and culture, Brown and gender, Blight and memory/commemoration) are very much rooted in DuBois’ analysis (1935!) Foner: Dubois portrayed the Reconstruction era as an idealistic effort to construct a democratic, interracial political order from the ashes of slavery, as well as a phase in a prolonged struggle between capital and labor for control of the South’s economic resources.

See also: David Roedegger, Eric Foner, James Oakes, Chandra Manning