W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the most celebrated intellectuals of the twentieth century, published Darkwater -- a powerful collection of essays, verse and fiction -- in 1920, two decades after his most famous book, The Souls of Black Folk. Throughout his long life and extraordinary career as a scholar, activist, writer and educator, Du Bois's body of work illumined America's understanding of the "problem of the color line." While much of his early texts were sociological investigations of the Black community, the author increasingly incorporated autobiographical, poetic and spiritual...

William Du Bois was one of only a handful of blacks to be born in New England during the 1860s. His experience of racism there led directly to his commitment to equal rights, and to his writing 'The Souls of Black Folk', in which Dr. Du Bois aspired to portray what it was like to be black in the final years of the nineteenth century. The book has amply fulfilled its author's hopes, and according to critic and essayist Henry Louis Gates, Jnr. "has served as a veritable touch-stone for every successive generation of black scholars since."

Originally published in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic study of race, culture, and education at the turn of the twentieth century. With its singular combination of essays, memoir, and fiction, this book vaulted Du Bois to the forefront of American political commentary and civil rights activism. It is an impassioned, at times searing account of the situation of African Americans in the United States, making a forceful case for the access of African Americans to higher education and extolling the achievements of black culture. Du Bois advances the provocative and influential...

This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind. He also charges that the strategy of accommodation to white supremacy advanced by Booker T. Washington, then the most influential black leader in America, would only serve to...

This collection of essays by scholar-activist W. E. B. Du Bois is a masterpiece in the African American canon. Du Bois, arguably the most influential African American leader of the early twentieth century, offers insightful commentary on black history, racism, and the struggles of black Americans following emancipation. In his groundbreaking work, the author presciently writes that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line, and offers powerful arguments for the absolute necessity of moral, social, political, and economic equality. These essays on the black...