A Study of Race in the US – DuBois on Black Reconstruction

Week 2:

WEB DuBois, Black Reconstruction, “Black Worker” and “The General Strike”

“Black Worker”

From its inception, US founded on principle of liberty for all and consent of the governed while maintaining millions of black folks in slavery. Initial justifications were a matter of race and color – that slave trade would cease bringing Africans to the continent so slavery would “naturally die.” But in the U.S. there was emphasis on reproduction.

Then slavery became a matter of social condition – eventually slaves would be freed to could set up their own country somewhere (because co-existence with whites was unthinkable). Then industrial revolution and:

“Black labor became the foundation stone not only of the Southern social structure, but of Northern manufacture and commerce, of the English factory system, of European commerce of buying and selling on a world-wide scale; new cities were built on the results of black labor, and a new labor problem, involving all white labor, arose both in Europe and America.” (p 5)

A Study of Race in the US – Douglass & DuBois

Week 1

Discussion Qs:
* Are there any themes common to both authors? Or points where they diverge?
[what it means to be black in the US; what it means to be an American]
* What does each piece prescribe as the way forward for black struggle?

Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (4 pp)
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/douglassjuly4.html

“Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”