Situating Black Reconstruction in the Du Boisian tradition

In this paper, I develop a contradictory argument about Black Reconstruction. First, I argue that Black Reconstruction certainly is a masterpiece, and indeed, perhaps one of Du Bois’s greatest works. Second, however, I argue that we ought to view Black Reconstruction in the context of Du Bois’s overall corpus of scholarship. ‘Singling out’ Black Reconstruction on its own actually detracts from the contributions of the book itself. In particular, I will highlight how Black Reconstruction fits into the Du Boisian tradition in three main ways: first, in its move from data to the explanatory framework of racialized modernity; second, in its insistence on theorizing beyond geographical boundaries to understand transnational flows of capital and power; and last, in its insistence on thick description as a necessary prerequisite for conceptual (and sometimes causal) analysis.