The Souls of Black Folk (Dover Thrift Editions)

by W.E.B. Du Bois and David W. Blight

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486280411
• ISBN13: 9780486280417
• Release Date: July 2016
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

Activist, Spiritual, Educational, Anthropological, and Poetic American Masterpiece

This work, written in the first decade of the twentieth century, is activist, spiritual, educational (on the history of African American life from the time of its publication back to the Civil War), anthropological, and poetic. "The Souls of Black Folk" should be in anthropological curriculums throughout the country, right alongside Margaret Mead's "Coming of Age in Samoa." For me, it showed, firstly, how slowly progress in the quality of life for African Americans had been since the Emancipation Proclamation up to 1903, and then, how slowly it has been in coming since the publication of this book to the present. We still have today a racial inequity on a scale that I, personally, am guessing will seem as barbaric in 100 years, just as the Jim Crow laws of the past seem barbaric to us now. DuBois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard and is credited as being one of the two leaders of the Harlem Renaissaince, Alain Locke being the other. I think this is one of the most important books on American culture that I know of, as well as an excellent document on the details of African American life, particularly in the years preceeding the works' completion.

The Black Emerson

If you are unaquainted with this book or with this author, you should remedy the situation immediately. In terms of eloquence, clear and ringing prose, descriptive power and any other quality that seperates great writers from mediocre ones, Dubois stands in the first rank. If Afro-Americans had had access to this book on a mass scale, there would have been a third real revolution in this country (I include the Civil War, obviously). This is the voice of suffering, but also of great ideas and ironclad arguement. It is also an incitement and very much an indictment, against racial boundaries that have plagued this nation since its inception. Dubois was and is one of the most powerful voices this country has ever produced. My jaw dropped on numerous occasions when first reading this text. He conveyed better than any other author, and there have been many great ones (Baldwin, Morrison, Wright, etc.) what it means to be "seperate, but equal." He is never an apologist. He at all moments maintains the dignity of his race. I really prefer in all aspects his demaeanor to Marcus Garvey's, even though that author was a more prominent "player." For modern revisionists (like Jane Smiley)who think that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was "great literature," I would recommend that they read this text and then decide. One voice is authentic, the other sorely disingenuous, and even, historically, counter-productive.