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W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois
A LIFE IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Charisse Burden-Stelly and Gerald Horne
Black History Lives
Copyright © 2019 by ABC-CLIO, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a
review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Burden-Stelly, Charisse, author. | Horne, Gerald, author.
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois : a life in American history / Charisse Burden-Stelly
and Gerald Horne.
Description: First edition. | Santa Barbara, California : ABC-CLIO, an
imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, [2019] | Series: Black history lives | Includes
bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017435 (print) | LCCN 2019019970 (ebook) | ISBN
9781440864971 (eBook) | ISBN 9781440864964 (print : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. |
African Americans—Biography. | African American authors—Biography. |
African American intellectuals—Biography. | African American civil rights
workers—Biography. | Intellectuals—United States—Biography. | Civil
rights workers—United States—Biography. | African Americans—Civil
rights—History.
Classification: LCC E185.97.D73 (ebook) | LCC E185.97.D73 B87 2019 (print) |
DDC 323.092 [B] —dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017435
ISBN: 978-1-4408-6496-4 (print)
978-1-4408-6497-1 (ebook)
23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available as an eBook.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Series Foreword vii
Preface ix
Chapter 1
A Life Beginning 1
Chapter 2
A Life of Excellence 19
Chapter 3
A Life of Protest 35
Chapter 4
A Life of Creation 51
Chapter 5
A Life of Pathways 67
Chapter 6
A Life of Conflict 83
Chapter 7
A Life in the Talented Tenth 99
Chapter 8
A Life of Departure 115
v
vi Contents
Chapter 9
A Life in Wartime 131
Chapter 10
A Life of Radicalism 149
Chapter 11
A Life on Trial 165
Chapter 12
A Life of Redemption 181
Why W.E.B. Du Bois Matters 195
Timeline 211
Primary Documents 215
Bibliography 229
Index 243
Series Foreword
The Black History Lives biography series explores and examines the lives
of the most iconic figures in African-American history, with supplemen-
tary material that highlights the subject’s significance in our contempo-
rary world. Volumes in this series offer far more than a simple retelling of
a subject’s life by providing readers with a greater understanding of the
outside events and influences that shaped each subject’s world, from famil-
ial relationships to political and cultural developments.
Each volume includes chronological chapters that detail events of the
subject’s life. The final chapter explores the cultural and historical signifi-
cance of the individual and places their actions and beliefs within an over-
all historical context. Books in the series highlight important information
about the individual through sidebars that connect readers to the larger
context of social, political, intellectual, and pop culture in American his-
tory; a timeline listing significant events; key primary source excerpts; and
a comprehensive bibliography for further research.
vii
Preface
In 2009, Greenwood Press published Gerald Horne’s W.E.B. Du Bois: A
Biography as part of the Greenwood Biographies series. One of the most
prolific historians of the twentieth century, Horne produced a rigorous
and accessible addition to the trove of Du Bois biographies that includes
Francis L. Broderick’s W.E.B. Du Bois: Negro Leader in a Time of Crisis,
Manning Marable’s W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat, and David
Levering Lewis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography. In
W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History, I significantly refocus Horne’s
2009 volume to highlight Du Bois’s fundamental contributions to Black
radical history. This substantial revision helps to elucidate why Du Bois
remains one of the most relevant scholar-activists in modern history more
than half a century after his transition.
In the narrative itself, I draw on Du Bois’s own words and the work of
contemporary progressive scholars to develop and expand upon key
themes and movements in African-American history. These include share-
cropping and debt peonage, the Negro Problem, race riots, the Great
Migration, and the Harlem Renaissance. I also specify the unique effects of
historical occurrences like World War I, the Great Depression, and anti-
communism on African Americans. In addition, I provide detailed discus-
sions about some of Du Bois’s most important intellectual and political
contributions, including his challenges to ethnological discourse at the
turn of the twentieth century, his support of women’s rights and equality,
and his conceptualization of African Americans as a “nation within a
nation.” I also situate Du Bois among other important, but often over-
looked, Black radicals like Hubert Harrison, Louise Thompson Patterson,
and Marvel Cooke. Taken together, these elaborations offer deeper insight
into Du Bois’s life and times.
Like other biographies in the Black History Lives biography series, I
contribute a concluding chapter about Du Bois’s contemporary relevance
ix
