Black Reconstruction in America (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois) An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880

Okay. I think everybody in America should read Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois.

I don't care if you read Eric Foner's book on Reconstruction or W.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America.

I think everybody in America should read Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois

The North shrank at the very thought of encouraging servile insurrection against the whites. Above all, it did not propose to interfere with property. Black people on the whole were considered cowards and inferior beings whose very presence in America was unfortunate.

did not want to be free.

And I think the general strike is kind of an amorphous idea especially online as more people learn about labor and learn about it. But it's also like kind of a specific thing. You can't just declare like, okay, we're all not going to go to work tomorrow. Like cool but there's so much planning that goes into it to make sure that people are able to do that and sustain that and the people that are traditionally already left out or the most vulnerable and marginalized, like their needs are prioritized because the people that can afford to declare general strike and not show up for a week, like that's all well and good for them. But what about everyone else who can barely afford to go to work at all? Yeah. I've had these arguments with people online and it's often like, well, you're saying we shouldn't - like if we just do it, people will figure it out. Like the infrastructure will be built after the fact. I'm like that's - I'm glad that you're in a situation where you feel like you could handle that kind of uncertainty but like a single mother of four who relies on her job to like keep them fed and alive isn't going to be like someone will figure out how to feed my kids. Like that's not how people work.

And arguably like one of the first ones was in Black Reconstruction, the book, there's this argument that the first general strike was enslaved people leaving the plantations and withdrawing their labor from that situation. Like that was a form of striking.

And I think the general strike is kind of an amorphous idea especially online as more people learn about labor and learn about it. But it's also like kind of a specific thing. You can't just declare like, okay, we're all not going to go to work tomorrow. Like cool but there's so much planning that goes into it to make sure that people are able to do that and sustain that and the people that are traditionally already left out or the most vulnerable and marginalized, like their needs are prioritized because the people that can afford to declare general strike and not show up for a week, like that's all well and good for them. But what about everyone else who can barely afford to go to work at all?

And arguably like one of the first ones was in Black Reconstruction, the book, there's this argument that the first general strike was enslaved people leaving the plantations and withdrawing their labor from that situation. Like that was a form of striking.

And I think the general strike is kind of an amorphous idea especially online as more people learn about labor and learn about it. But it's also like kind of a specific thing. You can't just declare like, okay, we're all not going to go to work tomorrow. Like cool but there's so much planning that goes into it to make sure that people are able to do that and sustain that and the people that are traditionally already left out or the most vulnerable and marginalized, like their needs are prioritized because the people that can afford to declare general strike and not show up for a week, like that's all well and good for them. But what about everyone else who can barely afford to go to work at all? Yeah. I've had these arguments with people online and it's often like, well, you're saying we shouldn't - like if we just do it, people will figure it out. Like the infrastructure will be built after the fact. I'm like that's - I'm glad that you're in a situation where you feel like you could handle that kind of uncertainty but like a single mother of four who relies on her job to like keep them fed and alive isn't going to be like someone will figure out how to feed my kids. Like that's not how people work.

And arguably like one of the first ones was in Black Reconstruction, the book, there's this argument that the first general strike was enslaved people leaving the plantations and withdrawing their labor from that situation. Like that was a form of striking.

The book there's this argument that the first general strike was enslaved people leaving the plantations and withdrawing their labor from that situation.

Du Bois, he writes Black Reconstruction in the 1930s, and he completely turns the Dunning School on its head and says, no, the Reconstruction era did not fail because Black people were ill-prepared for freedom.

And what Du Bois writes in this really centering Black freed people as part of this reconstruction study actually forms the foundation of Eric Foner's Reconstruction, which is what people consider the seminal book about Reconstruction now.

But at the time when Du Bois writes this, it doesn't get the mainstream attention.