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outcolder's review
4.0
I think my school history books were still influenced by the view Du Bois is attacking. I am sure I had the wrong idea about "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags." I think the US is still trying to forget this period. The names of many historical figures in this book were completely new to me. I am kind of reeling from it all.
I understand that in the heat of scientific argument Du Bois needed to use a lot of numbers and statistics, but I wish these had been presented in charts and graphs. Due to the financial and Jim Crow limits on his research, the book tends to cover a lot more legislative debate than events on the ground. If part of Du Bois's point is that the voices of African Americans are missing from the historiography, then he succeeded in awakening my interest. Where are the biographies of the Black Congressmen of the 19th Century, the former slaves who took political office or administrative roles in the new South, and especially the voices of Black women? Hopefully I'll come across that in books further down on my to read list.
This was a difficult read. After a few hundred pages I stopped flinching at the word "Negro" but descriptions from the reign of terror that ended Reconstruction and the amazingly stupid things white people tend to say when discussing race can be a bummer, especially when I think that in the 150 years since we haven't really made such a great deal of progress beyond some of the Civil Rights movement's gains and even those are under fierce attack. So this also awakened more of an interest in reparations, like, how could we get that going in a practical way?
But even with the dryness of some of the subject matter and the difficult feelings from the rest, Du Bois is a powerful writer and I wish I'd taken the time to copy down some of the fierce fighting words that boom from his pages. My favorite chapter, and I think probably Du Bois's favorite as well, is the chapter on the public schools.
Some day I'll read a more recent account of this period, it's so important and that's precisely why it's so buried.
I understand that in the heat of scientific argument Du Bois needed to use a lot of numbers and statistics, but I wish these had been presented in charts and graphs. Due to the financial and Jim Crow limits on his research, the book tends to cover a lot more legislative debate than events on the ground. If part of Du Bois's point is that the voices of African Americans are missing from the historiography, then he succeeded in awakening my interest. Where are the biographies of the Black Congressmen of the 19th Century, the former slaves who took political office or administrative roles in the new South, and especially the voices of Black women? Hopefully I'll come across that in books further down on my to read list.
This was a difficult read. After a few hundred pages I stopped flinching at the word "Negro" but descriptions from the reign of terror that ended Reconstruction and the amazingly stupid things white people tend to say when discussing race can be a bummer, especially when I think that in the 150 years since we haven't really made such a great deal of progress beyond some of the Civil Rights movement's gains and even those are under fierce attack. So this also awakened more of an interest in reparations, like, how could we get that going in a practical way?
But even with the dryness of some of the subject matter and the difficult feelings from the rest, Du Bois is a powerful writer and I wish I'd taken the time to copy down some of the fierce fighting words that boom from his pages. My favorite chapter, and I think probably Du Bois's favorite as well, is the chapter on the public schools.
Some day I'll read a more recent account of this period, it's so important and that's precisely why it's so buried.
ralowe's review
5.0
w.e.b. dubois isn't really, literally writing about ontology here, but his minute catalogue of historical facts and dates and oddly-inconsistently notated figures threw me into the abyss of my own being as a purportedly black subject. blackness went into question for me here, as it is casually recognizable in the world today right now as we know it. a kind of quantum theoretical splintering broke off in my mind every time dubois would recreate some historic scene where possession (that is, the antonym of dispossession) and franchise would narrowly elude the negro in the legislative, judicial, executive machines of the state. blackness only makes sense to me politically in terms of its relationship with the state. what does blackness become if it is self-possessed under the law of the land? what if negroes merged into the violence of the state as enfranchised citizens? what shakes me is the confusion around how that question is never rejected, can never be, because the alternative is (beautiful) struggle/death. what dubois puts down makes that determination stark and unmistakable. also, i couldn't stop and/or was assisted greatly by picturing tommy lee jones' abolitionist thaddeus stephens. it kept me afloat in the haystack of minutiae that it galls to mention as trivial to-day with the advent of searchable online archives.
mattirubin's review
5.0
This book was so good, and it's truly horrifying how much of this info I never learned about til now despite growing up in Georgia, majoring in Political Science with a concentration in US Politics, and working for a labor union.
I would recommend everyone read this.
It was a little hard for me to follow by audiobook, partly because of how dense it is and I just don't do audio books as well when there's so much info in it, and partly because the book as a well written and sourced history is so sooo packed full of quotes from primary and secondary sources but the audiobook didn't have clear indicators of where quotes stopped and ended unless written into the text. That meant it excluded visual indicators readers seeing how text is formatted weren't transferred over in some way.
I plan on getting a copy of the print book and reading it again some time in a year or so, and probably would've done this regardless of whether parts of the audiobook were hard for me to follow because the books just that good and there's that much to learn from it.
I would recommend everyone read this.
It was a little hard for me to follow by audiobook, partly because of how dense it is and I just don't do audio books as well when there's so much info in it, and partly because the book as a well written and sourced history is so sooo packed full of quotes from primary and secondary sources but the audiobook didn't have clear indicators of where quotes stopped and ended unless written into the text. That meant it excluded visual indicators readers seeing how text is formatted weren't transferred over in some way.
I plan on getting a copy of the print book and reading it again some time in a year or so, and probably would've done this regardless of whether parts of the audiobook were hard for me to follow because the books just that good and there's that much to learn from it.
mythos05's review
3.0
Learned a lot still going to have to go back because the course isn't finished yet. There are a lot of details I will notice when I have to go back to certain chapters.
highestiqinfresno's review
5.0
A classic history that is still shockingly relevant today. A must read for anyone interested in the subject.