"These essays by the prolific historian and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois focus on some of the African-American author's lesser-known writings. They include "Strivings of the Negro People," "A Negro Schoolmaster in the New South," "The Talented Tenth," "Address to the Nation: The Niagara Movement Speech," "Evolution of the Race Problem," and more"--

Scholar, author, editor, teacher, reformer and civil rights leader, W.E.B. Du Bois (1888-1963) was a major figure in American life and one of the earliest proponents of equality for black Americans. This is the first volume of three and incorporates correspondence from 1877 to 1934.

This book provides a new interpretation of the life of W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the most important African American scholars and thinkers of the 20th century. This revealing biography captures the full life of W.E.B. Du Bois—historian, sociologist, author, editor, and a leader in the fight to bring African Americans more fully into the American landscape as well as a forceful proponent of their leaving America altogether and returning to Africa. Drawing on extensive research and including new primary documents, sidebars, and analysis, Gerald Horne and Charisse Burden-Stelly offer a portrait of this remarkable man, paying special attention to the often-overlooked radical decades at the end of Du Bois's life. The book also highlights Du Bois's relationships with and influence on civil rights activists, intellectuals, and freedom fighters, among them Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Louise Thompson Patterson, William Alphaeus Hunton, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The biography includes a selection of primary source documents, including personal letters, speeches, poems, and newspaper articles, that provide insight into Du Bois's life based on his own words and analysis.

The men and women who shaped our world—in their own words. The Wisdom Library invites you on a journey through the lives and works of the world’s greatest thinkers and leaders. Compiled by scholars, this series presents excerpts from the most important and revealing writings of the most remarkable minds of all time. THE WISDOM OF W.E.B. DU BOIS “Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote of W.E.B. Du Bois, “History cannot ignore [him] because history has to reflect truth, and Dr. Du Bois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest for truth about his own people.” Du Bois was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard (1896). A brilliant writer and speaker, he was the outstanding African-American intellectual of his time. His lifelong active struggle for racial equality and civil rights resulted in the founding of both the Niagara Movement and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As editor of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, Du Bois presented the literary genius of many of the Harlem Renaissance’s most compelling voices; and his own works—the sociological study The Philadelphia Negro and his famous 1903 treatise, The Souls of Black Folk—eloquently delineated the African-American struggle for identity in America. During his lifetime, Du Bois was a powerful force in academia, literature, civil rights, and the peace movement. Using excerpts from his many books as well as from articles, essays, poems, letters, and speeches, The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois provides a telling portrait of the man and his groundbreaking ideas. It is a tribute to a voice that would not be silenced and to a pioneer who, in his passion for justice movingly declared, “the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”

The essential writings of Du Bois have been selected and edited by David Levering Lewis, his Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer.

The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history. To develop this groundbreaking work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African-American in the American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.