Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860 – 1880. 1935. New York: Free Press, 1935.

== Summary: ==
DuBois’
Black Reconstruction is a political
statement: a stance against the “False histories” that have ignored the central
role of African-Americans during the Civil War and, especially, during
reconstruction. He writes in his conclusion: “In order to paint the South as a
martyr to inescapable fate, to make the North the magnanimous emancipator, and
to ridicule the Negro as the impossible joke in the whole development, we have
in fifty years, by libel, innuendo and silence, so completely misstated and
obliterated the history of the Negro in America and his relation to its work
and government that today it is almost unknown.” The covering of the African
American experience has political repercussions and turns the study of history
from a tool to guide mankind to a tool of propaganda to serve political and
personal interests. It was the black worker, DuBois argues, that was the
underlying cause of the civil war, because the foundation of the economic order
in America, especially the south, was rested upon the backs of black workers. Dubois
places the African American at the center
of the story. He is the laborer to which the economic system of the south is
built upon. His transition and role during and after the war is key to
understanding the Civil War and Reconstruction. “Out of the exploitation of the
dark proletariat,” DuBois writes, “comes the surplus value” of the controlling
nations. African Americans also played a fundamental role during the war
(200,000 as soldiers, another 300,000 as laborers). Furthermore, after the war,
the question of the “black” worker drove and inspired the deeper questions of
democracy in America, as it was a “test of the nation’s real belief in
democratic institutions.” Ultimately, Dubois shows how,
for brief moments, reconstruction presented the best of what democracy could
and should be in America, only to be subverted by economic interests. 
Historiography: More recent
arguments (Foner and ideology, Johnson and culture, Brown and gender, Blight
and memory/commemoration) are very much rooted in DuBois’ analysis (1935!) Foner:
Dubois portrayed the Reconstruction era as an idealistic effort to construct a
democratic, interracial political order from the ashes of slavery, as well as a
phase in a prolonged struggle between capital and labor for control of the
South’s economic resources.         
See also: David Roedegger, Eric Foner, James Oakes, Chandra Manning