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Slavery & Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois

A research topic guide covering the history of slavery in the United States and key abolitionists.

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Re-Cognizing W. E. B. Dubois in the 21st Century

This volume brings together the most important elements of the genius of W. E. B. DuBois, Harvard’s first African-American graduate and arguably the father of American sociology as well as the premier twentieth-century intellectual activist. The range of essays discuss DuBois’s breadth of genius as an essayist, novelist, sociologist, philosopher, cultural critic, African historian, historian of African religions, Pan-African activist, and philosopher. Many of the essays offer new research such as links to a college choir that sing the songs from the Souls of Black Folk as a backdrop for considering the role of synaesthesia and transitivity in Souls; fieldwork from Ghana regarding DuBois’s early connections with Ghana as well as contemporary political framing of DuBois as a Ghanaian; chronological study of the role of messianic characters in DuBois’s several novels; a perspective from the new field of rectificatory ethics regarding where DuBois would stand on the issue today. This collection is framed by the problem of religion and echoes DuBois’s 1903 claim that the problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of the color line. In 2006, the claim is that the problem of the twenty-first century will be the problem of the religious color line so that in order to understand our century’s problem we need to understand and apply the work of the genius who first understood the analysis of subjectivity and history as a problem.

W.E.B. Du Bois On Race and Culture

Interpreting Du Bois' thoughts on race and culture in a broadly philosophical sense, this volume assembles original essays by some of today's leading scholars in a critical dialogue on different important theoretical and practical issues that concerned him throughout his long career: the conundrum of race, the issue of gender equality, and the perplexities of pan-Africanism.

W E B du Bois

The second volume of the Pulitzer Prize--winning biography that "The Washington Post" hailed as "an engrossing masterpiece" Charismatic, singularly determined, and controversial, W.E.B. Du Bois was a historian, novelist, editor, sociologist, founder of the NAACP, advocate of women's rights, and the premier architect of the Civil Rights movement. His hypnotic voice thunders out of David Levering Lewis's monumental biography like a locomotive under full steam. This second volume of what is already a classic work begins with the triumphal return from WWI of African American veterans to the shattering reality of racism and lynching even as America discovers the New Negro of literature and art. In stunning detail, Lewis chronicles the little-known political agenda behind the Harlem Renaissance and Du Bois's relentless fight for equality and justice, including his steadfast refusal to allow whites to interpret the aspirations of black America. Seared by the rejection of terrified liberals and the black bourgeoisie during the Communist witch-hunts, Du Bois ended his days in uncompromising exile in newly independent Ghana. In re-creating the turbulent times in which he lived and fought, Lewis restores the inspiring and famed Du Bois to his central place in American history.

W. E. B. du Bois: Writings

Historian, sociologist, novelist, editor, and political activist, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was the most gifted and influential black intellectual of his time. This Library of America volume presents his essential writings, covering the full span of a restless life dedicated to the struggle for racial justice. The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States 1638-1870 (1896), his first book, renders a dispassionate account of how, despite ethical and political opposition, Americans tolerated the traffic in human beings until a bloody civil war taught them the disastrous consequences of moral cowardice. The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a collection of beautifully written essays, narrates the cruelties of racism and celebrates the strength and pride of black America. By turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical, Du Bois pays tribute to black music and religion, explores the remarkable history of the Reconstruction Freedman's Bureau, assesses the career of Booker T. Washington, and remembers the death of his infant son. Dusk of Dawn (1940) was described by Du Bois as an attempt to elucidate the "race problem" in terms of his own experience. It describes his boyhood in western Massachusetts, his years at Fisk and Harvard universities, his study and travel abroad, his role in founding the NAACP and his long association with it, and his emerging Pan-African consciousness. He called this autobiography his response to an "environing world" that "guided, embittered, illuminated and enshrouded my life." Du Bois's influential essays and speeches span the period from 1890 to 1958. They record his evolving positions on the issues that dominated his long, active life: education in a segregated society; black history, art, literature, and culture; the controversial career of Marcus Garvey; the fate of black soldiers in the First World War; the appeal of communism to frustrated black Americans; his trial and acquittal during the McCarthy era; and the elusive promise of an African homeland. The editorials and articles from The Crisis (1910-1934) belong to the period of Du Bois's greatest influence. During his editorship of the NAACP magazine that he founded, Du Bois wrote pieces on virtually every aspect of American political, cultural, and economic life. Witty and sardonic, angry and satiric, proud and mournful, these writings show Du Bois at his freshest and most trenchant. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.