W.E.B. Dubois Reflects on the Purpose of History (1935)

HANDOUT 15.4 {DOCUMENT}

W. E. B. DU BOIS REFLECTS ON THE PURPOSE OF

HISTORY

The following is an excerpt from a chapter titled “The Propaganda of History” in W. E. B. Du Bois’s influential 1935

book Black Reconstruction in America.

How the facts of American history have in the last half century been falsified because the nation

was ashamed. The South was ashamed because it fought to perpetuate human slavery. The North

was ashamed because it had to call in the black men to save the Union, abolish slavery and establish

democracy.

What are American children taught today about Reconstruction? . . . [A]n American youth attending college today would learn from current textbooks of history that the Constitution recognized

slavery; that the chance of getting rid of slavery by peaceful methods was ruined by the Abolitionists; that after the period of Andrew Jackson, the two sections of the United States “had become

fully conscious of their conflicting interests. Two irreconcilable forms of civilization . . . [with] the

democratic . . . in the South, a more stationary and aristocratic civilization.” He would read that

Harriet Beecher Stowe brought on the Civil War; that the assault on Charles Sumner was due to

his “coarse invective” against a South Carolina Senator; and that Negroes were the only people to

achieve emancipation with no effort on their part. That Reconstruction was a disgraceful attempt to

subject white people to ignorant Negro rule . . .

In other words, he would in all probability complete his education without any idea of the part

which the black race has played in America; of the tremendous moral problem of abolition; of the

cause and meaning of the Civil War and the relation which Reconstruction had to democratic government and the labor movement today . . .

War and especially civil strife leave terrible wounds. It is the duty of humanity to heal them. It was

therefore soon conceived as neither wise nor patriotic to speak of all the...