“The Happiest Peasants in the World”: Du Bois, Haiti, and Black Reconstruction

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction has received ample scholarly attention. Countless books and articles analyze a pioneering work that challenged the dominant caricatures of the United States’ first attempt at a true biracial democracy. Still, some aspects of Black Reconstruction have received scant attention. In particular, scholars have tended to overlook the extent to which Du Bois’s evolving attitudes on Haiti influenced his writings about the postemancipation United States.

This paper recovers that history. More specifically, it argues that, over the course of the first three decades of the twentieth century, Du Bois came to understand the first century of Haitian independence as a laudable example of postemancipation development that the United States had failed to imitate. In doing so, this chapter accomplishes two tasks. First, it places Black Reconstruction within the global context intended by Du Bois. Second, it recovers some of the most original elements of the work. In Black Reconstruction, Du Bois did not just condemn the abandonment of Reconstruction. Instead, he encouraged readers to develop a more enlightened perspective on much‐maligned Haiti.