W. E. B. Du Bois: Selections from His Writings

by W.E.B. Du Bois, Bob Blaisdell (Editor)

A towering figure in African-American history, W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) created a substantial literary legacy beyond such seminal works as The Souls of Black Folk . This volume highlights his other nonfiction writings and should be of great value to students in secondary school and college as well as to other readers.
Contents
Strivings of the Negro People (1897); A Negro Schoolmaster in the New South (1899); The Song of the Smoke (1899); The Black A Social Study (1901); The Sorrow Songs (1903); The Talented Tenth (1903); Credo (1904); Address of the Niagara Movement to the Country (1906); Religion in the South (1907); The Value of Agitation (1907); The Case (1907); The Burden of Black Women (1907); Evolution of the Race Problem (1909); Politeness (1911); Jesus Christ in Georgia (1911); The Upbuilding of Black The Success of the Negroes and Their Value to a Tolerant and Helpful Southern City (1912); Intermarriage (1913); Socialism and the Negro Problem (1913); Woman Suffrage (1915); Booker T. Washington (1915); The Shadow of Years (1918); Returning Soldiers (1919); Let Us Reason Together (1919); The Souls of White Folk (1920); The Damnation of Women (1920); and Again, Social Equality (1920).

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 26, 2013

About the author

In 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced 'doo-boyz') was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made his name, in which he urged black Americans to stand up for their educational and economic rights. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited the NAACP's official journal, "Crisis," from 1910 to 1934. Du Bois turned "Crisis" into the foremost black literary journal. The black nationalist expanded his interests to global concerns, and is called the "father of Pan-Africanism" for organizing international black congresses.

Although he used some religious metaphor and expressions in some of his books and writings, Du Bois called himself a freethinker. In "On Christianity," a posthumously published essay, Du Bois critiqued the black church: "The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer." Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party and officially repudiated his U.S. citizenship at the end of his life, dying in his adopted country of Ghana. D. 1963.

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Reviews

[JRT · Rating 5 out of 5]

The remarkable thing about Du Bois is that he was able to develop and evolve his politics and beliefs over the course of his nine decades of life, something that most Black revolutionaries / scholar-activists never got the chance to do. This book does a really good job showing Du Bois’ early political and philosophical development. While the book does focus on some of Du Bois’ more integrationist positions (as expressed in “Strivings of the Negro People” and “The Talented Tenth,”) it also reveals that even during his most liberal stage, Du Bois had a radical in him just waiting to explode onto the scene. You can see flashes of his radical internationalism in “Socialism and the Negro Problem” and “The Souls of White Folk,” where he lambasted the white left for putting chauvinism before true revolutionary socialism, and exposed American imperial hypocrisy and European parasitism with regard to the "Darker Nations" as the underlying reasons for WWI. This book also reveals some of Du Bois’ views on race as a sociopolitical category (rather than an essential group characteristic), and shows that Du Bois was a champion for women’s liberation and equality from the very beginning. While there were some writings that could have been included that gave more insight into Du Bois' sociopolitical interests (i.e. "Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans" of 1906), I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants a brief introduction into Du Bois’ stellar scholarship.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Jesus Christ in Georgia" is incredible, as is the rest of the book.