Black Reconstruction - Twitter Syllabus

#BlackReconstruction:

The evolving syllabus of the Twitter group connecting the legacy of Reconstruction to

Black life today in the United States

Depending on whom you ask, Reconstruction, which lasted from 1863 to 1877, began with Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that declared “all persons held as slaves within [Confederate] States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free.” Others might say it began the moment the Confederacy, its industry, farms, and railroads ruined, surrendered to Union troops in 1865. Still, a more exacting group might date it at the passage of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which carved the South into five military districts in which a military commander had the final word for an entire decade. Despite these varied beginnings, all ignore the stories of the people central to this revolutionary moment: enslaved Black people.

As we grapple with the radical meaning of today’s Black Lives Matters movement, it is important to look at our history to understand how our ancestors mobilized to secure freedom after the Civil War. It is also important to understand power and the systems that sought to undermine the potential for Black autonomy and freedom in the United States.

While Reconstruction demonstrated the law’s limited ability to reverse the violence of 366 years of chattel slavery, Black people still organized civic associations, won elective office, and established towns---all motivated by an alternative vision of American democracy.

We are indebted to W.E.B. Du Bois’s book Black Reconstruction, the first revisionist account of the racist view that Black people were unequipped for freedom. We will read Du Bois in tandem with other sources past and present.

Our Twitter circle aims to continue Du Bois’s critical study of Reconstruction by assessing its legacy through digitally-accessible books, essays, articles, films, photographs, and other media. All participants are welcome. Suggest changes and additions to the syllabus by tweeting @gaumwhat or @GlitchNCo.

You can find an open-source version of Black Reconstruction by clicking here. There is full text, PDF, Amazon Kindle, and other formats. It’s also cool to acquire physical copies through libraries, stores, and friends. For the most affordable books, check here.

Just joining us? Here’s what has happened so far.

Up Next:

Upcoming - Black Economics and Black Politics During Reconstruction

READ: Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, Chapter 4, “The General Strike”

READ: Steven Hahn - A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, chapter(s) to be determined.

So what exactly happened during Reconstruction? Why, for so long, did the Dunning School persist and how did the historians and the public at large forget about the Black people who long-agitated for their freedom while taking the reins of government after the Confederacy’s ruin? Hahn's book is the product of decades of research into the social life of the freedpeople and their fight to secure civic autonomy.

What did Black politics look like during Reconstruction and how does Hahn’s analysis compare to Du Bois’s?

Recommended Reading:

Lawrence Goldstone, Inherently Unequal
Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard

Last Sessions:

Session 3 - Lynching: Murdering to “Protect” White Womanhood and Control Black People

READ: Anna Julius Cooper, A Voice from the South (1892), Chapter 1, “Womanhood A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race”

“I speak for the colored women of the South, because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history and there her destiny is evolving.” - Anna Julia Cooper, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 1893 Chicago World Fair

Why did Anna Julius Cooper focus on the plight and political agitation of “the colored women of the South”? What were Black women doing during this time in response to lynchings?

READ: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases” (1892)

In this pamphlet, Wells wrote, “The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.”

How did Ida B. Wells come to adopt this final position? What was the purpose of lynch law?

MAP: Lynchings by states and counties in the United States, 1900-1931

When Du Bois published Black Reconstruction in 1935, there was a well-demonstrated epidemic of public lynchings of Black men, women, and immigrants, including Mexican laborers and Chinese coolies, many of whom were accused of violating the social codes of Jim Crow segregation. As Cooper and Wells documented, white mobs often initiated lynchings and riots as retribution for rumors that Black men harmed white women. Whether wanton violence or grisly symbolism, mobs also castrated many of these men. While Du Bois wrote against the historians of the Dunning School, he also understood the very real urgency of anti-Black lynchings and extrajudicial violence.

What do you see in this map?

Recommended Reading:

Stephen William Berry II, All That Makes a Man: Love & Ambition in the Civil War South
Michael D. Pierson, Free Hearts & Free Homes: Gender & American Antislavery Politics”
Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations & The Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country

Session 2 - The Legacy of D.W. Griffiths’s Birth of a Nation

WATCH: D.W. Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation (1915)

Released in 1915, Birth of a Nation was one of the earliest silent films. Griffiths directed white actors in blackface to depict freedpeople’s handling of Reconstruction following the Civil War. Birth of a Nation has been criticized for its racist tropes, which spurred a “reconciliation” movement that sought to submerge differences between former Confederate and Union soldiers. NOTE: This is a 3-hour film so make sure you budget time to watch; or, watch in halves.

How does this film reflect the Dunning School’s popularity in U.S. life during the 1910s?

What tropes of characterizations does Griffiths create through his use of Blackface? What narrative did he present about Reconstruction?

Recommended Reading:

“The Birth of a Nation and Black Protest” http://chnm.gmu.edu/episodes/the-birth-of-a-nation-and-black-protest/

Thomas Dixon, The Clansman
Thomas Dixon, The Leopard’s Spots
Clarence Lusane, The Black History of the White House

Session 1 - Getting Oriented - “Reconciliation,” the Dunning School, and Du Bois’ Fight

(Missed the discussion? Read @HeidiZiegler’s Storify recap here.)

CONTEXT: The Dunning School

READ: Caroline E. Janney, “Civil War Veterans and the Limits of Reconstruction”

In the 1880s and 1890s, white Confederate and Union soldiers organized events to commemorate the Civil War. This moment is important because it represented the quarter century memorialization of the war. Only one generation later, the “reconciliation” movement showed how white men in both the North and the South who fought for the Union or the Confederacy sought to paper over differences by shifting the focus from the abolition of slavery to the mutual “valor” displayed by both sides.

Does Janney’s article show us how Black soldiers from the Union were remembered or whether the “reconciliation” movement between Northern and Southern white men erased Black soldiers' contributions?

Recommended Reading:

Donald R. Shaffer, After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War
Jacqueline Glass Campbell, When Sherman Marched North from the Sea: Resistance on the Confederate Home Front
Frances M. War Stories: Suffering & Sacrifice in the Civil War North

READ: William A. Dunning, “The Undoing of Reconstruction,” The Atlantic Monthly (October 1901)

Commonly referred to as the “Dunning School” after Columbia University professor William Archibald Dunning, Dunning and the historians that he trained argued that Reconstruction showed that Black people were unprepared for freedom and mismanaged Southern governments. The Dunning School’s arguments mirrored the prejudices of the Jim Crow system of segregation that dominated the social and economic organization of the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Dunning published the core of the Dunning School argument in this essay for a mass, literate population.

In his view, who “undid” Reconstruction and how?

Recommended Reading:

John R. Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction
Adam Freedman, A Less Perfect Union
Kenneth M. Stampp, The End of Reconstruction

Documentary: David Padrusch, Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War

READ: W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (1935), Chapter 1, “The Black Worker”; Chapter 2, “The White Worker”; Chapter 3, “The Planter”

Du Bois’ study of freedpeople’s politics in the South was part of a larger attempt to challenge the Dunning School’s conclusions. Despite the efforts of Du Bois and other Black “race men” and “race women,” the Dunning School remained the dominant interpretation of Reconstruction in school textbooks well into the 1960s .

What does Du Bois want the reader to know about the importance of the Southern planter’s power to control social relations and economic outcomes?

This syllabus is by no means final of set in stone… Send any and all suggestions to @gaumwhat or @GlitchNCo!