Du Bois read the 1930s Depression and the slavery crisis as analogous capitalist transformations

Evidence

Finally, in the Rosenwald Conference lecture, we find that Du Bois’s analysis of the Depression, which international capitalism was experiencing in the 1930s, parallels his analysis of the crisis brought on by slavery in the earlier stage of American capitalist development. Both economically and politically, the Depression and the crisis of slavery would fundamentally transform the mode of capitalist relations. Furthermore, both had precipitated revolutionary movements and revolutionary social change. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 921