Black Reconstruction in America

"W.E.B. Du Bois was the father of American sociology and one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. His classic text, The Souls of Black Folk , was published in 1903. Black Reconstruction in America came thirty years later. Black Reconstruction in America is important for a number of reasons. One, it sets the stage for the field of reconstruction studies. Prior to its publication, the failure of post-Civil War reconstruction was cast as the inevitable result of the inadequacy of black people. Du Bois’s diligent scholarship and his political, economic and social analyses proved that image was wrong. He showed that freed people, together with Radical Republicans, created transformative political solutions to post-Civil War problems. He showed the promise of reconstruction ended ingloriously because government abandoned the cause of freed people. It’s a dense book, but it’s filled with compelling narratives and analyses of the motivations, frustrations and aspirations of participants in the process of Reconstruction. He explores why disaffection exists between poor and working-class white Americans, how race is deployed to destroy the potential for class solidarity and the stark reality of antebellum black life in the South. It was a groundbreaking text, which remains widely influential to this day. Du Bois was not just a scholar, he was also amongst the most important political organizers of black Americans. He was one of the founders of the NAACP. All of his intellectual commitments, as writer, scholar, mentor and organizer, were geared towards addressing these problems."

"Black Reconstruction, by DuBois."

"It's a tie between W. E. B. Du Bois's "Black Reconstruction" and Eric Foner's "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.""