DuBois and Black Reconstruction

 

PROPAGATION OF HISTORY AND FAITH

 

DuBois, W. E. B.  Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880. (1935; New York: The Free Press, 1998).

 

Dr. DuBois knew what was problematic about his revisionist history in Black Reconstruction.  He made his intentions clear in his note "To The Reader" (December 1934).  His ideal audience consisted of people who believed a black person in America "and in general is an average and ordinary human being, who under given environment develops like other human beings…"  DuBois was not trying to convince those who regarded " the Negro as a distinctly inferior creation, who can never successfully take part in modern civilization…"  Indeed, the Negro, in my mind at least, is the chief architect of civilization.

 

Is it only a matter of accident that Carter G. Woodson's The Mis-Education of the Negro was published  two years before Black Reconstruction?  No.  It wasn't an accident.  It was a future opportunity.  Prudence might insist that we consign the proximity of publication to a wasteland of accident.  I refuse to concur with prudence.  It is no accident that two distinct items of ancestral wisdom should speak in tandem.

 

David Levering Lewis got it right.

 The final chapter of Black Reconstruction , "The Propaganda of History ,"   is magnificent.  It clears the air. It punches us in the eye so that we might see better, believe better.  In short, the final chapter sounds as if it were written in 2020.  The best black writing always speaks to a future we have already experienced.

 

A single paragraph of the final chapter delivers a necessary stab of recognition-----

 

"In the first place somebody in each era must make clear the facts with utter disregard  to his own wish and desire and belief.  What we have got to know , so far as is possible, are the things that actually happened in the world.  Then with that much clear and open to every reader, the philosopher and prophet has a chance to interpret these facts;  but the historian has no right, posing as a scientist, to conceal or distort facts; and until we distinguish between these two functions of the chronicler of human action, we are going to render it easy for a muddled world out of sheer ignorance to make the same mistake ten times over " (722).

 

The rumposity of pandemic  urges us to expose, as DuBois did, how the wrong historical narrative can sponsor systemic ignorance, the ignorance of enslavement that Woodson illuminated in his  judicious echoing of David Walker.  The wisdom need for action is no accident as we engage the complicated moment of Black Lives Matter. Keep the faith!

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            October 26, 2020

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CLA paper

CLA,   April 6, 2018 Jerry W. Ward, Jr. PHBW:   Negotiating the Ideas of Seven Writers [1]                 Founded in 1983 by Dr. Maryemma Graham, "The Afro-American Novel Project" (AANP) had the initial goal of identifying all published novels written by African Americans from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century.   AANP became The Project on the History of Black Writing (PHBW) in 1990 to reflect an enlarged vision and a more ambitious aim.   PHBW want to make a substantial contribution to what we then spoke of as our "Profession" by organizing bibliographic information and databases, sponsoring institutes and seminars, and by encouraging our colleagues to have rigorous engagements with all genres of black (African American) "writing" within   frames   of historical inquiry.                              The Project's   working frame was an   adaptation of the paradigm of unity in African American Studies , f
Read more

reading notes for September 23, 2019

Reading Notes for September 23, 2019 Eighteen years after the tragedy of 9/11 as I re-read Amiri Baraka's "Somebody Blew Up America" (2001), two meanderings occur: 1) a chance temptation to ask what the term "pro-Semitic" can mean in the contexts of (a) Israeli and world politics and (b) to what extent the amount of foreign aid the USA donates to Israel truly matters, and 2) a more focused temptation to ask if Morrison's Playing in the Dark sheds light on the motives that govern projects devoted to discussions of slavery beginning with 1619. I suspect those projects are at once very literary and very political. Such speculations arose during a September 12 conversation with one of my former UNCF/Mellon mentees whose research on redemption now teaches me, the former mentor, a few things about the urgency of scholarship in the twenty-first century.   The journey forth happens in the cognitive territory of "universal enslavement,"
Read more

Musings, February 8-9, 2021

    MUSINGS OF THE DAY   The mother- and father-ships of sanity have landed   Let our enemies of whatever color they be know this as we eradicate them with the tools of insanity.   Mr. Ramcat informed me this morning that I need to tie up loose ends and thank all the people who have made my life a rich and satisfying experience of 77+ years.   If you deserve my gratitude, you know who you are.   Four quotations to brighten the day------   "I don't regret my years as a prosecutor assigned to juvenile court.   In some ways, I think it is why I was put on this earth." ---Daphne R. Robinson   "While there are books and articles concentrating on young black men in the social sciences and education, thee has been comparatively little input from scholars in the arts and humanities/" Howard Rambsy II   "The hashtag 'black lives matter,' which now rings prophetically through various quarters of the United States of America and int
Read more