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W.E.B. Du Bois: Writings

The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade | The Souls of Black Folk | Dusk of Dawn | essays More

Edited by Nathan Huggins

“It is no exaggeration to say that [Du Bois] anticipated, and influenced, many of the events that led to the making of the modern world.” — Washington Post

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Experts”
January 21, 2022

Video How W.E.B. Du Bois restored Black eyewitness accounts to the history of Reconstruction
November 30, 2021

Story of the Week W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of White Folk”
June 19, 2020

Save $30 when you buy both Du Bois volumes.

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.

Nathan Huggins (1927–1989), volume editor, was director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. His books include Black Odyssey: The Afro-American Ordeal in Slavery, Harlem Renaissance, Protestants Against Poverty, and Slave & Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

W.E.B. Du Bois: Writings is kept in print by a gift from Daniel and Joanna S. Rose to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Story of the Week W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Experts”
January 21, 2022

Video How W.E.B. Du Bois restored Black eyewitness accounts to the history of Reconstruction
November 30, 2021

Story of the Week W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of White Folk”
June 19, 2020

Interviews Stony the Road: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow
September 12, 2019

News Turning high fashion into politics: Henry Louis Gates Jr. on W.E.B. Du Bois and the New Negro movement of 1900
December 1, 2017
Table of Contents

The Suppression of the African Slave Trade

The Souls of Black Folk

Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept

Essays and Articles

Essays
Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization
The Conservation of Races
Careers Open to College-Bred Negroes
The Talented Tenth
The Negro in Literature and Art
Negro Education
An Essay Toward a History of the Black Man in the Great War
The Souls of White Folk
The Hands of Ethiopia
The Damnation of Women
Marcus Garvey
The Black Star Line
A Lunatic or a Traitor
Criteria of Negro Art
So the Girl Marries
The Negro College
On Being Ashamed of Oneself: An Essay on Race Pride
The Propaganda of History
The Revelation of Saint Orgne the Damned
The Trial
The Acquittal
A Vista of Ninety Fruitful Years
To an American Born Last Christmas Day
My Character

Articles from The Crisis
The Crisis (November 1910)
Agitation (November 1910)
Pink Franklin (February 1911)
Rampant Democracy
A Golden Wedding (June 1911)
Business and Philanthropy (June 1911)
I Am Resolved (January 1912)
A Mild Suggestion (January 1912)
An Open Letter to Woodrow Wilson (March 1913)
Another Open Letter to Woodrow Wilson (September 1913)
Howells and Black Folk (November 1913)
The Three Wise Men (December 1913)
A Question of Policy-The Philosophy of Mr. Dole (May 1914)
Votes for Women (August 1914)
The Prize Fighter (August 1914)
Does Race Antagonism Serve any Good Purpose (September 1914)
From the “Boston Globe” (January 1915)
An Amazing Island (June 1915)
Woman Suffrage (November 1915)
A Singer (October 1916)
“We Should Worry” (June 1917)
Houston (October 1917)
The Black Man and the Unions (March 1918)
Paul Le Rol Robeson (March 1918)
Tillman (August 1918)
“Jim Crow” (January 1919)
Reconstruction and Africa (February 1919)
Returning Soldiers (May 1919)
Race Intelligence (July 1920)
An Open Letter to Warren Gamaliel Harding (March 1921)
The Negro and Radical Thought (July 1921)
President Harding and Social Equality (December 1921)
Charles Young (February 1922)
Abraham Lincoln (May 1922)
Ten Phrases (July 1922)
Again, Lincoln (September 1922)
On Being Crazy (June 1923)
The Tuskegee Hospital (July 1923)
The Technique of Race Prejudice (August 1923)
The Younger Literary Movement (February 1924)
The Challenge of Detroit (November 1925)
“Porgy” by DuBose Heyward (March 1926)
Books (Van Vechten’s “Nigger Heaven”) (December 1926)
Flood (July 1927)
Lynchings (August 1927)
The Name “Negro” (March 1928)
Robert E. Lee (March 1928)
DePriest (February 1929)
Gambling (January 1930)
Patient Asses (March 1930)
Protest (October 1930)
Books (March 1931)
Chestnut (January 1933)
The Right to Work (April 1933)
Our Music (July 1933)
Segregation in the North—“No Segregation”—Objects of Segregation—Boycott- Integration (April 1934)
William Monroe Trotter (May 1934)
The Board of Directors on Segregation (May 1934)
Counsels of Despair—The Anti-Segregation Campaign—Protest—Methods of Attack (June 1934)
Dr. Du Bois Resigns (August 1934)

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ISBN: 978-0-94045033-2 1334 pages

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N° 34 Library of America Series

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