[This weekend
marks the 150th anniversary of the landmark Civil
Rights Act of 1866, one of many such Reconstruction
sesquicentennials over the next decade. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy
five Reconstruction histories, leading up to a special weekend post on the
Civil Rights Act.]
On the book that
revised Reconstruction historiography, redefined an entire profession, and then
went even further.
The development
of American historiography is a complex and multi-part story, and would
certainly have to include mid-19th century pioneers such as Francis Parkman, the 1884 founding of the American
Historical Association, and the turn-of-the-century popularization of
scholarly history by figures such as Frederick Jackson
Turner and Charles and
Mary Beard, among many other moments and figures. So it’d be crazy of me to
suggest that one historiographical book stands out as both the single most
significant turning point in the profession and the best reflection upon its
prior inadequacies, right? Well, then you’re going to have to call me crazy,
because I would describe W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America
(1935) as both of those things. Du Bois had published books in virtually every
genre by the time of Black Reconstruction’s
release, but interestingly none since his Harvard PhD dissertation (The Suppression
of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870)
could quite be categorized as American historical scholarship. But when he
returned fully to that genre, he not only produced one of his very best works,
but a book that changed everything about both Reconstruction historiography and
the discipline as a whole.
Even if we knew
nothing of the half-century of American historical writing that preceded Du
Bois’s book, its strengths and achievements would be clear and impressive. In
an era when extended archival research was almost impossible for most scholars,
especially those not supported by wealthy institutions (which Du Bois had not
been for decades by the time he published Black
Reconstruction, having worked
primarily at Atlanta University), Du Bois produced a work of history that
relied entirely on archival and primary documents, materials he used to develop
original, thorough, and hugely sophisticated and convincing analyses of
Reconstruction’s efforts, effects, successes, and shortcomings in every
relevant state and community. Moreover, since that prior half-century of
historical writing, at least on Reconstruction and related themes, had been
almost entirely driven by established
narratives and myths (ones that, frustratingly, have apparently endured
into our own moment), Du Bois could not do what virtually every other
historian since has done—build on the work done by his or her peers, add his or
her voice to existing conversations. He had to invent that work and those
conversations anew, and did so with nuance, care, and unequivocal brilliance.
That’d be more
than enough to make Black Reconstruction
a must-read, but in its final
chapter, “The Propaganda of History,” Du Bois added two striking additional
layers to the book. First and foremost, he called out that half-century of
historiographical mythmaking, creating a devastatingly thorough and convincing
critique of the historians and works that had combined to produce such a false
and destructive narrative of Reconstruction (one echoed and extended by pop
cultural works such as Thomas Dixon’s novels,
The Birth
of a Nation, Claude Bowers’ bestselling The
Tragic Era, and, a year after Du Bois’s book, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind).
Yet at the same time, decades before Hayden White, Du Bois
used the particular case of Reconstruction historiography to analyze the
subjective and political contexts that inform even the best history writing,
recognizing the limitations of the
concept of “scientific” scholarship well before the profession as a whole was
able or willing to do so. On every level, a book ahead of its time—and still
vital to ours.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Reconstruction histories you’d highlight?
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