A review by ralowe
Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois

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.