Present Books In Favor Of Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
| Original Title: | Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 |
| ISBN: | 0684856573 (ISBN13: 9780684856575) |
| Edition Language: | English |
W.E.B. Du Bois
Paperback | Pages: 746 pages Rating: 4.43 | 1994 Users | 90 Reviews
Details Out Of Books Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
| Title | : | Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 |
| Author | : | W.E.B. Du Bois |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 746 pages |
| Published | : | December 1st 1999 by Free Press (first published 1935) |
| Categories | : | History. Nonfiction. Race. Politics. North American Hi.... American History. Cultural. African American |
Relation Conducive To Books Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
A truly extraordinary work. Beautifully written, cogently and convincingly argued. Passionate and powerful and vital. Read it."Some Americans think and say that the nation freed the black slave and gave him a vote and that, unable to use it intelligently, he lost it. That is not so. To win the war America freed the slave and armed him; and the threat to arm the mass of the black workers of the Confederacy stopped the war. Nor does this fact for a moment deny that some prophets and martyrs demanded first and last the abolition of slavery as the sole object of the war and at any cost of life and wealth.
So, too, some Americans demanded not simply physical freedom but votes, land, and education for blacks, not only in order to compass the economic emancipation of labor, but also as the only fulfillment of American democratic ideals; but most Americans used the Negro to defend their own economic interests and, refusing him adequate land and real education and even common justice, deserted him shamelessly as soon as their selfish interests were safe. "
"Reconstruction, therefore, in the South degenerated into a fight of rivals to control property and through that to control the labor vote. This rivalry between dictators led to graft and corruption as they bid against each other for the vote of the Negro, while meantime Negro labor in its ignorance and poverty was agonizing for ways of escape. Northern capital compromised, and Southern capital accepted race hate and black disfranchisement as a permanent program of exploitation."
****************
Still in mid-read, but wanted to share this, not least for how relevant to the last few months it seems:
“Above this lowest mass rose a middle class of poor whites in the making. There were some small farmers who had more than a mere sustenance and yet were not large planters. There were overseers. There was a growing class of merchants who traded with the slaves and free Negroes and became in many cases larger traders, dealing with the planters for the staple crops. Some poor whites rose to the professional class, so that the rift between the planters and the mass of the whites was partially bridged by this smaller intermediate class.
While revolt against the domination of the planters over the poor whites was voiced by men like Helper, who called for a class struggle to destroy the planters, this was nullified by deep-rooted antagonism to the Negro, whether slave or free. If black labor could be expelled from the United States or eventually exterminated, then the fight against the planter could take place. But the poor whites and their leaders could not for a moment contemplate a fight of united white and black labor against the exploiters. Indeed, the natural leaders of the poor whites, the small farmer, the merchant, the professional man, the white mechanic and slave overseer, were bound to the planters and repelled from the slaves and even from the mass of the white laborers in two ways: first, they constituted the police patrol who could ride with planters and now and then exercise unlimited force upon recalcitrant or runaway slaves; and then, too, there was always a chance that they themselves might also become planters by saving money, by investment, by the power of good luck; and the only heaven that attracted them was the life of the great Southern planter.”
And this, longer, but so beautifully written I could not dare cut a word, and which also seems painfully worth reading during our present times:
"This brings us down to the period of the Civil War. Up to the time that the war actually broke out, American labor simply refused, in the main, to envisage black labor as a part of its problem. Right up to the edge of the war, it was talking about the emancipation of white labor and the organization of stronger unions without saying a word, or apparently giving a thought, to four million black slaves. During the war, labor was resentful. Workers were forced to fight in a strife between capitalists in which they had no interest and they showed their resentment in the peculiarly human way of beating and murdering the innocent victims of it all, the black free Negroes of New York and other Northern cities; while in the South, five million non-slaveholding poor white farmers and laborers sent their manhood by the thousands to fight and die for a system that had degraded them equally with the black slave. Could one imagine anything more paradoxical than this whole situation?
America thus stepped forward in the first blossoming of the modern age and added to the Art of Beauty, gift of the Renaissance, and to Freedom of Belief, gift of Martin Luther and Leo X, a vision of democratic self-government: the domination of political life by the intelligent decision of free and self-sustaining men. What an idea and what an area for its realization — endless land of richest fertility, natural resources such as Earth seldom exhibited before, a population infinite in variety, of universal gift, burned in the fires of poverty and caste, yearning toward the Unknown God; and self-reliant pioneers, unafraid of man or devil. It was the Supreme Adventure, in the last Great Battle of the West, for that human freedom which would release the human spirit from lower lust for mere meat, and set it free to dream and sing.
And then some unjust God leaned, laughing, over the ramparts of heaven and dropped a black man in the midst.
It transformed the world. It turned democracy back to Roman Imperialism and Fascism; it restored caste and oligarchy; it replaced freedom with slavery and withdrew the name of humanity from the vast majority of human beings.
But not without struggle. Not without writhing and rending of spirit and pitiable wail of lost souls. They said: Slavery was wrong but not all wrong; slavery must perish and not simply move; God made black men; God made slavery; the will of God be done; slavery to the glory of God and black men as his servants and ours; slavery as a way to freedom — the freedom of blacks, the freedom of whites; white freedom as the goal of the world and black slavery as the path thereto. Up with the white world, down with the black!
Then came this battle called Civil War, beginning in Kansas in 1854, and ending in the presidential election of 1876 — twenty awful years. The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. The whole weight of America was thrown to color caste. The colored world went down before England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and America. A new slavery arose. The upward moving of white labor was betrayed into wars for profit based on color caste. Democracy died save in the hearts of black folk.
Indeed, the plight of the white working class throughout the world today is directly traceable to Negro slavery in America, on which modern commerce and industry was founded, and which persisted to threaten free labor until it was partially overthrown in 1863. The resulting color caste founded and retained by capitalism was adopted, forwarded and approved by white labor, and resulted in subordination of colored labor to white profits the world over. Thus the majority of the world's laborers, by the insistence of white labor, became the basis of a system of industry which ruined democracy and showed its perfect fruit in World War and Depression. And this book seeks to tell that story. "
E-readers can find the whole book here https://archive.org/details/blackreco...
Rating Out Of Books Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
Ratings: 4.43 From 1994 Users | 90 ReviewsCritique Out Of Books Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
Phenomenal. W.E.B. DuBois crafts a masterful and comprehensive narrative of the politics of the Reconstruction period. Beginning with a prelude about slavery, he plunges first into the role of the slaves in the Civil War against the context of a North that was unclear and uncoordinated on its purposes in the war. His notion of the slaves as having conducted a "general strike" as well as his detailed exploration of the symbolic and material impact of black soldiers in the Union profoundly shapeRadicals in the United States should study this book with at least the amount of seriousness and attentiveness that we give Marx's Capital
Every Black American and every inclusive, serious genealogist and family history researcher needs to read this book, to begin to understand WHAT WAS DONE TO OUR FAMILIES, THEIR COMMUNITIES, PERSONAL PROPERTY and LIVELIHOODS, right after Emancipation and through the SABOTAGED RECONSTRUCTION. What does DuBois write about South and North Carolina? The United States needs to understand and appreciate this book!
An important scholar and social activist, W.E.B DuBois was the first African-American to earn a Ph. D . from Harvard University. Du Bois followed up this accomplishment with advanced training in sociology in Germany. Du Bois was a professor of history and sociology at Atlanta University and was among the founders of the NAACP.In this book, DuBois provided a striking take-down on the scholarship of Reconstruction in the early 20th century. The Dunning School portrayed Reconstructed as the unfair
I've read lots of parts of this book--especially in the research for my book, but I just finally read it start to finish and it was just really depressing. I think DuBois is one of America's greatest writers and thinkers. Note: not, "best *black* writer." No caveats. He called out the Reconstruction myth before the modern revisionists. He studies and tracked and called out racism and capitalism. All of our race vs. class flights that we think we just invented, he already discussed that. DuBois
It would not have been American, however, not to have maintained some color discrimination, however petty.Broken limbs, broken heads, the mangling of bodies, all prove that it was a contest between enraged men: on the one side from hatred to a race; and on the other, desire for self-preservation, revenge for past grievances and the inhuman murder of their comrades.How extraordinary, and what a tribute to ignorance and religious hypocrisy, is the fact that in the minds of most people, even those
W.E.B. Du Bois is in fine form with this book, written as a much needed correction to the racist narrative that Reconstruction was a disaster and that Black legislators of the period were corrupt and incompetent. Du Bois first centers the enslaved as central to the victory of the North in the Civil War. The North was resistant to the idea that the Civil War was ultimately about slavery and the Union army was initially hesitant to accept Black soldiers. But as enslaved people left their
0 Comments:
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.