Black Folk Then and Now (the Oxford W. E. B. du Bois) : An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race
ISBN: 9780199383238
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Social Science;

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history.In Black Folk Then and Now, W. E. B. Du Bois embarks on a mission to correct the omissions, misinterpretations, and deliberate lies he detected in previous depictions of black history. An exemplary revisionist exploration of history and sociology, this essay reflects Du Bois's lifelong mission to bring to light the truths of Black history and expose the African peoples' noble heritage.W. E. B. Du Bois writes extensively about the color line, which he believed at the time of publication to be the defining problem of the twentieth century. In 1946, following the Holocaust, Du Bois revised his arguments, reshaping them into the narrative we find in The World and Africa. With a series introduction by editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and an introduction by Wilson Moses, this edition is essential for anyone interested in African American history.

Civil rights leader and author, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868. He earned a B.A. from both Harvard and Fisk universities, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and studied at the University of Berlin. He taught briefly at Wilberforce University before he came professor of history and economics at Atlanta University in Ohio (1896-1910). There, he wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903), in which he pointed out that it was up to whites and blacks jointly to solve the problems created by the denial of civil rights to blacks. In 1905, Du Bois became a major figure in the Niagara Movement, a crusading effort to end discrimination. The organization collapsed, but it prepared the way for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in which Du Bois played a major role. In 1910, he became editor of the NAACP magazine, a position he held for more than 20 years.

Du Bois returned to Atlanta University in 1932 and tried to implement a plan to make the Negro Land Grant Colleges centers of black power. Atlanta approved of his idea, but later retracted its support. When Du Bois tried to return to NAACP, it rejected him too.

Active in several Pan-African Congresses, Du Bois came to know Fwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, and Jono Kenyatta the president of Kenya. In 1961, the same year Du Bois joined the Communist party, Nkrumah invited him to Ghana as a director of an Encyclopedia Africana project. He died there on August 27, 1963, after becoming a citizen of that country.

(Bowker Author Biography)


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