Search results for ""Author W. E. B. DuBois""

One of the Most Important Books on Civil Rights, Race, and Freedom Ever Written. “A groundbreaking challenge to white supremacy.” —The New York Times A classic work of American literature, African-American history, and sociology by W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk is a monumental collection of essays that examines race and racism in America during the early 1900s and prior. Du Bois derived much of the book’s content from his own personal experience as an African-American living during these tumultuous times, which resulted in an expertly crafted firsthand account of the trials of oppression and segregation existing in America. Many of the book’s essays formulated Du Bois’s then-perceived radical thought and platform for change, and eventually became catalysts that sparked protest movements across the country. Containing some of the most revered work on the topic of race, this stunning new trade edition of The Souls of Black Folk is perfect for anyone interested in African-America literature and history.

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Undoubtedly the most influential black intellectual of the twentieth century and one of America's finest historians, W.E.B. Du Bois knew that the liberation of African Americans required liberal education and not vocational training. He saw education as a process of teaching certain timeless values: moderation, an avoidance of luxury, a concern for courtesy, a capacity to endure, a nurturing love for beauty. At the same time, Du Bois saw education as fundamentally subversive. This was as much a function of the well-established role of education-from Plato forward-as the realities of the social order under which he lived. He insistently calls for great energy and initiative; for African Americans controlling their own lives and for continued experimentation and innovation, while keeping education's fundamentally radical nature in view. Taken together, these ten essays cover half a century during which the social, political, and technological transformations were unparalleled by any in recorded history. And while Du Bois reflects these changes, certain constants persist: a demand for excellence, sacrifice, and a life of service; and an insistence that while such a life will bring hardships and temptations, it will also bring fulfillment. In Du Bois's view, only with such a life will one truly live. In this affirmation, there runs a particular feeling that the history of African Americans has profoundly influenced their ideas about service, of compassion, of justice. Though containing speeches written nearly one-hundred years ago, and on a subject that has seen more stormy debate and demagoguery than almost any other in recent history, The Education of Black People approaches education with a timelessness and timeliness, at once rooted in classical thought that reflects a remarkably fresh and contemporary relevance.

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Historian, journalist, educator, and civil rights advocate W.E.B. Du Bois was perhaps most accomplished as a sociologist of race relations and of the black community in the United States. This volume collects his sociological writings from 1898 to 1910. The 18 selections include five on Du Bois's conception of sociology and sociological research, especially as a tool in the struggle for racial justice; excerpts from studies of black communities in the South and the North, including "The Philadelphia Negro"; writings on black culture and social life, with a selection from "The Negro American Family"; and later works on race relations in the United States and elsewhere after World War II. This section includes a powerful 50th-anniversary reassessment of his classic 1901 article in the Atlantic in which he predicted that "the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line."

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