Professor Horn on Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in America

PM: Black Reconstruction in America is viewed as Du Bois's magnum opus it overturned a hundred years of racist storyography surrounding reconstruction where the role that Black people played in their own emancipation was really ignored. PM: I want to give a kind of brief overview of the what I take to meet the central chapters so first you have him opening up with the Black worker and this is an interesting framing he's framing enslaved Black people as workers which is important. One of my favorite passages from the text is this here's the modern labor problem here's the kernel of the problem of religion and democracy of humanity words and futile gestures avail nothing out of the exploitation of the dark proletariat comes a surplus