Discover how post-Civil War America was a new world. Learn how African Americans made political, social and economic progress in the face of violence.

Experience the aftermath of the Civil War — a bewildering, exhilarating and terrifying time. African Americans who had played a crucial role in the war now grapple with the terms and implications of Reconstruction and their hard-won freedom.

"A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century...

A definitive edition of the landmark book that forever changed our understanding of the Civil War's aftermath and the legacy of racism in America. Upon publication in 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois's now classic Black Reconstruction offered a revelatory new assessment of Reconstruction--and of American democracy itself. One of the towering African American thinkers and activists of the twentieth century, Du Bois brought all his intellectual powers to bear on...