Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880

756 Pages·1998·3.56 MB·English

by  W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

First Transaction printing 2013
Originally published in 1935 by Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Introduction copyright © 2012 by Transaction Publishers. Originally published in Black Politics in a Time
of Transition, National Political Science Review, Volume 13, edited by Michael Mitchell and David Covin.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
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This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2012021875
ISBN: 978-1-4128-4620-2
Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Du Bois, W. E.
B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868–1963.
Black reconstruction in America : toward a history of the part of which Black folk played in the attempt
to reconstruct democracy in America, 1860–1880 / W. E. B. Du Bois, with a new introduction by Mack H.
Jones.
p. cm.
“Originally published in 1935 by Harcourt, Brace and Co.”
1. Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877) 2. African Americans—History—1863-1877. 3. African
Americans—Politics and government. 4. African Americans—Employment—History—19th century. I.
Title.
E668.D84 2012
973.8—dc23
2012021875
Ad Virginiam Vitae Salvatorem
Contents
Introduction to the Transaction Edition
To the Reader
I. The Black Worker
II. The White Worker
III. The Planter
IV. The General Strike
V. The Coming of the Lord
VI. Looking Backward
VII. Looking Forward
VIII. Transubstantiation of a Poor White
IX. The Price of Disaster
X. The Black Proletariat in South Carolina
XI. The Black Proletariat in Mississippi and Louisiana
XII. The White Proletariat in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida
XIII. The Duel for Labor Control on Border and Frontier
XIV. Counter-Revolution of Property
XV. Founding the Public School
XVI. Back Toward Slavery
XVII. The Propaganda of History
Bibliography
Introduction to the Transaction
Edition
Mack H. Jones
Introduction
In my view, Dr. Du Bois was America’s most outstanding and socially
significant intellectual ever, Black or White. His contributions as a scholar and
political activist affected and enlightened practically every segment of American
life and culture. For this paper, I choose to discuss his contributions to the
development of Black or African American Studies. (Throughout the paper I use
the two terms interchangeably.) Although the modern Black Studies movement
did not begin until the 1960s, Du Bois made the case for Black Studies in the
early days of the twentieth century and actually carried out Black Studies
research long before the term was coined. In reality, Du Bois was the father, or
perhaps, we might say, the intellectual grandfather of modern African American
Studies. To support this assertion I will first identify some of the ideological
assumptions and principles of the Black Studies movement and then demonstrate
how they were reflected in the scholarship and political activism of Du Bois long
before they were articulated by scholars such as Nathan Hare, Maulana Karenga,
Molefi Asante, and others. Indeed, Du Bois not only addressed the assumptions
and principles that were to characterize the Black Studies movement of the
1960s, but he also raised and expounded on almost all of the ideas and
arguments that arose during the broader Black liberation movement of the 1960s
and 1970s. Arguments about integration vs. separation, nationalism vs.
assimilation, socialism vs. capitalism, male chauvinism vs. feminism, etc., were
all addressed by Du Bois half a century earlier. Du Bois not only addressed all of
these issues, he did so with clarity and conviction unmatched by many
contemporary scholars.
Biography
Knowing and understanding Du Bois’ biography and how it was shaped by
the changing times in which he lived and struggled are critical for understanding
his evolution as the intellectual grandfather of modern African American
Studies. Given the often repeated assertion that he was an elitist, it is easy to
forget that he was not from a privileged or middle-class family. He grew up in a
single parent home and never really knew his father. His mother was a frail
woman, a domestic who took in ironing from White folks to make ends meet. Du
Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a town of some five thousand
people including twenty-five to fifty Black folk, in 1868, only five years after
the end of slavery.1 He and his mother attended a Congregationalist church
where they were the only members of color. After graduating from high school
in 1884 as the only Black student in the class, Du Bois entered Fisk in 1885 and
graduated in 1888 as the top student in a class of five. While at Fisk for two
summers he taught elementary school in rural Tennessee, and it was there that he
developed his understanding of the place of Black people in American society.
After graduating from Fisk, he entered Harvard in 1888 and received the BA
cum laude in 1890 and the MA from Harvard in 1891. He pursued doctoral
studies in Germany from 1892 to 1894 but did not receive the doctoral degree
because he lacked one year in residence. Du Bois received the doctoral degree
from Harvard in 1895. From 1897 to 1910 he served at Atlanta University. He
left Atlanta University in 1910 and worked for the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People NAACP where he served on the board of
directors and edited the Crisis magazine; he resigned from the NAACP in 1934
and returned to Atlanta University as head of the sociology department. Du Bois
was retired involuntarily by Atlanta University in 1944 and returned to the
NAACP. In 1948, Du Bois was again dismissed from NAACP. After 1948, Du
Bois continued to work with a variety of organizations opposed to war and
Western imperialism. Du Bois moved to Ghana, West Africa, in 1961 and died
there in 1963 while working on his final project, an encyclopedia of Africa.
Ideological Assumptions and Principles of the Black Studies Movement
Black Studies or African American Studies as an academic discipline in
American education grew out of struggles of Black students of the 1960s on
campuses of both historically Black and traditionally White institutions. During
the 1960s students argued that mainstream or White scholarship was irrelevant
for those interested in understanding and transforming the position of Blacks in
American life because it grew out of the experiences of White or Euro-
Americans and was grounded in the ideology of White supremacy. As a
consequence, it was argued, mainstream scholarship raised questions and
generated information that gave a distorted view of American society and the
place of Black folk in it. To overcome this problem, advocates of Black Studies
called upon Black scholars to challenge the assumptions of mainstream
scholarship and develop new paradigms and frames of reference that would be
grounded in the experiences of African people in the United States and around
the world. These new frames of reference would ask different questions and
generate information that would illuminate more clearly the nature of oppression
and suggest more effective strategies for Black liberation.
Relevance, according to the proponents of Black Studies, was not merely an
academic matter. Developing new paradigms and frames of reference and
conducting research was only half of the responsibility. The other half involved
applying this new knowledge in the struggle against racial oppression. To know
carried with it the responsibility to do was the first principle of the Black Studies
movement. Thus to satisfy the call for relevance, Black scholars had to be
activists as well. There could be no separation between town and gown, between
campus and community.
Black Studies advocates were also concerned that Eurocentric scholarship
transformed Black students into vulgar careerists concerned only with personal
advancement and who assumed no special responsibility for uplifting the race.
Thus, relevance required that professors not only produce a scholarship more
useful for transforming the conditions of Black folk, but also that professors,
strive to produce students who recognized and accepted their roles in the
struggle for racial advancement.
Maulana Karenga has asserted that this call for relevance led Black Studies
advocates to formulate four distinct objectives:
1. Teach the Black experience in its historical and current unfolding.
2. Assemble and create a body of knowledge that would contribute to
intellectual and political emancipation.
3. Create a cadre of Black intellectuals committed to community service.
4. Maintain a mutually beneficial relationship between the campus and
community.
Du Bois as a Precursor of the Black Studies Paradigm
Du Bois, through his scholarship and political activism, not only satisfied