Black Reconstruction in America is a revisionist approach to looking at the reconstruction of the south after its defeat in the American civil war. As the author, W.E.B. Du Bois, was known for his Marxism, it is not surprising that this 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 bourgeoisies. 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 the history of the United States, reconstruction was the period after the American Civil War when the states of the breakaway Confederacy were reintegrated into the United States of America. ... The American Civil War (1861–1865) was fought in North America within the United States of America, between twenty-three mostly northern states of the Union and the Confederate States of America, a coalition of eleven southern states that declared their independence and claimed the right of secession from the... William Edward Burghardt DuBois (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was an African-American civil rights leader and scholar. ... Marxism is the social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... The proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. ... A depiction of T.D. Rices Jim Crow In the United States, the so-called Jim Crow laws were made to enforce racial segregation, and included laws that would prevent African Americans from doing things that a white person could do. ...
As Black Populism asserted itself and grew into a regional force, it met fierce resistance from the white planter and business elite that, through the Democratic Party and its affiliated network of courts, militias, sheriffs, and newspapers, maintained tight control of the region.
Black Populism found early expression in various agrarian organizations, including the Colored Agricultural Wheels, the southern Knights of Labor, the Cooperative Workers of America, and the Colored Farmers Alliance.
Black Populism was destroyed, marking the end of organized political resistance to the return of White supremacy in the South in the late nineteenth century.
The 13th, 14th and 15th Constitutional Amendments were adopted in the wake of the Civil War: the 13th, which abolished slavery; the 14th, which granted civil rights to Negroes; and the 15th, which granted the right to vote to all otherwise qualified adult males regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Reconstruction nevertheless continued until 1877, when the contentious Presidential election was decided in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes, supported by Northern states, over his opponent, Samuel J. Tilden.
Following Reconstruction and the perpetuation of segregation, the romanticized idea of the South was born, and many in the New South began decrying the corruption during Reconstruction.
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