Reading Response: Historical Bias and Knowing the Author

When reading historical documents one of the biggest things to keep in mind is that the common phrase, “History is written by the victor,” is applicable often. History is not always about winners or losers but the idea is that there is probably another view point that needs to be considered when looking at documents, especially older ones. The time period we are focusing on exemplifies this very well. Du Bois made it very clear that many of the documents that were published on reconstruction from that era are very misleading and leave out anything that the black population accomplished in the reconstruction effort. Authors from this period try to further cement and reinforce the skin color based social hierarchy that had existed since the inception of the country. They do this by almost disregarding any atrocities that had happened when slavery was legal and portraying the black population as largely uneducated and illiterate. When reading the documents and analyzing the data from the period I will actively question them and try to figure out what they may have wanted to suppress or been to ignorant to consider. Finding corroborating evidence or evidence that suggests another possible interpretation will be important. Overall knowing the period and what political, social, and cultural bias we are dealing with will be extremely important to my interpretations.