We recommend reading what Dr. Martin Luther King said about Reconstruction as part of his tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois on Feb. 23, 1968. King explains that myths about Reconstruction poisoned “the collective mind of America with racism” and he describes how Du Bois set out to demolish those myths in his vital text, Black Reconstruction in America.
Unfortunately, the Zinn Education Project has found that many of the myths W. E. B. Du Bois and Dr. Martin Luther King described still prevail in state standards on Reconstruction. We document those findings in Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction. This is the first-ever national report on teaching Reconstruction. Please read and share!
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To understand why [W. E. B. Du Bois’s] study of Reconstruction was a monumental achievement, it is necessary to see it in context.
White historians had for a century crudely distorted the Negro’s role in the Reconstruction years. It was a conscious and deliberate manipulation of history and the stakes were high.
The Reconstruction [era] was a period in which Black men had a small measure of freedom of action. If, as white historians tell it, Negroes wallowed in corruption, opportunism, displayed spectacular stupidity, were wanton, evil, and ignorant, their case was made. They would have proved that freedom was dangerous in the hands of inferior beings. One generation after another of Americans were assiduously taught these falsehoods and the collective mind of America became poisoned with racism and stunted with myths.
Dr. Du Bois confronted this powerful structure of historical distortion and dismantled it. He virtually, before anyone else and more than anyone else, demolished the lies about Negroes in their most important and creative period of history. The truths he revealed are not yet the property of all Americans but they have been recorded and arm us for our contemporary battles.
In Black Reconstruction in America, Dr. Du Bois dealt with the almost universally accepted concept that civilization virtually collapsed in the South during Reconstruction because Negroes had a measure of political power.
Dr. Du Bois marshaled irrefutable evidence that far from collapsing, the Southern economy was recovering in these years. Within five years the cotton crop had been restored and in the succeeding five years had exceeded prewar levels. At the same time other economic activity had ascended so rapidly the rebirth of the South was almost completed.
Rights granted by the 15th Amendment during Reconstruction. Source: Library of Congress
Beyond this he restored to light the most luminous achievement of the Reconstruction — it brought free public education into existence not only for the benefit of the Negro but it opened school doors to the poor whites.
In honor of MLK Day, we are sharing this image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr speaking at the 100th-anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois’s birthday. Sponsored by Freedomways magazine, the event was held at Carnegie Hall on 2/23/1968
From the Daily Worker & Daily World Photo Collection pic.twitter.com/GUCYPQpbW2
— Tamiment Library NYU (@TamimentLibrary) January 17, 2022
He documented the substantial body of legislation that was socially so useful it was retained into the 20th century even though the Negroes who helped to write it were brutally disenfranchised and driven from political life.
He revealed that far from being the tragic era white historians described, it was the only period in which democracy existed in the South.
This stunning fact was the reason the history books had to lie because to tell the truth would have acknowledged the Negroes’ capacity to govern and fitness to build a finer nation in a creative relationship with poor whites.
Read the full tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois and more speeches and articles by Dr. King in The Radical King from Beacon Press.
Find resources below to teach about Reconstruction including lessons, books, articles, and key dates in history.
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