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Understanding Reconstruction - A Historiography

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====W.E.B. Du Bois's reassessment of Reconstruction====
[[File:WEB_DuBois_1918.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|W.E.B. Du Bois - 1917]]
However, one work stands out from this period as a harbinger of what was to come. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote ''Black Reconstruction in America'' in 1935. Du Bois chastised historians for ignoring the central figures of Reconstruction, the freedmen. Moreover, Du Bois pointedly remarked on the prevailing racial bias of the historical inquiry up to that moment, “One fact and one alone explains the attitude of most recent writers toward Reconstruction; they cannot conceive of Negroes as men.” Du Bois’s indictment served as a precursor for the explosion of revisionist history of the 1960s which would latch onto the argument of Du Bois and refocus the debate concerning Reconstruction to include the central figures of the freedmen.

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