Synopsis
A revisionist Marxist history arguing that emancipated Black Americans were central agents of democracy during and after the Civil War.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workEnslaved people freed themselves through a general strike of their labor and briefly built a genuine, if betrayed, interracial democracy during Reconstruction.
It overturns racist historiography by placing Black agency and class struggle at the center of America's democratic experiment.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Eric Foner, Reconstruction.
Reading note
Read it knowing it was written to refute the racist scholarship of its day, which explains its polemical and corrective force.
Best paired with
Eric Foner, Reconstruction