Black Reconstruction in America is a book by W. E. B. Du Bois,
first published in 1935. It is revisionist approach to looking
at the Reconstruction of the south after its defeat in the
American civil war. On the whole, the book takes a Marxist
approach to looking at reconstruction. The essential argument of
the text is that the Black and White laborers, who are the
proletariat, were divided after the civil war on the lines of
race, and as such were unable to stand together against the
white propertied class, the bourgeoisie. This to Du Bois was the
failure of reconstruction and the reason for the rise of the Jim
Crow laws, and other such injustices. In addition to creating a
landmark work in early U.S. Marxist sociology, at the time
Dubois’ historical scholarship and use of the techniques of
primary source data research on the post war political economy
of the former Confederate States’ were equally ground breaking.
He performed the first systematic and rigorous analysis of the
political economy of the recons