The Future of Reconstruction Studies

Maintaining a Radical Vision of African Americans in the Age of Freedom
http://journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies

African American history during Reconstruction has made great strides since the 1935 publication of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction. As far as the field has come, it still has a ways to go to capture the full kaleidoscope of African American life. Du Bois’s landmark text serves as an example of the radical historical visions and methods we still need in order to reveal the complexities of African Americans in the age of legal freedom. This essay outlines the work required to maintain a radical vision of black Reconstruction. It argues historians writing about African Americans need to embrace radical historical methodologies in order to uncover the more obscure inner lives of people experiencing a world turned upside down by war, Reconstruction, and redemption. To produce histories of fully developed black subjects, the essay advocates the need for scholars to excavate the interiorities of black life, the complexities of black personhood, and black emotions and sensibilities. Such work requires a commitment to intersectional approaches that include but extend beyond the most familiar ones. The essay suggests postwar historians take better advantage of the theoretical and methodological tools at their disposal to better illuminate black history and culture during this period. Finally, it insists historians make more research on Black Reconstruction available to popular audiences to fulfill their duties to the field and the audiences they serve.