Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period
with the Revolutions Study Group

13-week session, Mondays, February 4 – April 29 7:00pm-9:00pm

**Monday, February 10 will be held at the Brooklyn Commons (388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217)**

Some have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935), W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2007) in whole, and for more recent research, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used, as e-books, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus.

Suggested donations: $95 / $110 / $125 sliding scale
No one turned aware for inability to pay

Register on Marxist Education Project website

Download flyer.