There is of course "Black Reconstruction" by W. E. B. DuBois, which certainly begins to set the record straight regarding distortions of history regarding the postbellum South and the period of US Reconstruction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Reconstruction
What else should I read?
I would argue the 1944 biography of Ben Tillman by Francis Butler Simkins should be considered. Simkins was rather liberal for his time, especially considering that he was from Edgefield, South Carolina. Simkins was part of a movement, mainly literary, of Southerners that questioned how things were. The biography was far from a hagiography; it covered but the positives and negatives of Tillman