front cover of The Souls of Black Folk
The Souls of Black Folk
Essays and Sketches
W.E.B. Du Bois
University of Massachusetts Press, 2018
In honor of the 150th anniversary of W.E. B. Du Bois's birth in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the University of Massachusetts Library has prepared a new edition of Du Bois's classic, The Souls of Black Folk. Originally published in 1903, Souls introduced a number of now-canonical terms into the American conversation about race, among them double-consciousness, and it sounded the ominous warning that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." In a new introduction, Shawn Leigh Alexander outlines the historical context of this critical work and provides rare documents from the special collections archive at the Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Unlike Du Bois's more scholarly work, Souls blends narrative and autobiographical essays, and it continues to reach a wide domestic and international readership. This moving homage to black life and culture and its sharp economic and historical critique are more important than ever, resonating with today's unequivocal demand that Black Lives Matter in the twenty-first century.
[more]

front cover of W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk
A Graphic Interpretation
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
Rutgers University Press, 2023
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” These were the prescient words of W. E. B. Du Bois’s influential 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. The preeminent Black intellectual of his generation, Du Bois wrote about the trauma of seeing the Reconstruction era’s promise of racial equality cruelly dashed by the rise of white supremacist terror and Jim Crow laws. Yet he also argued for the value of African American cultural traditions and provided inspiration for countless civil rights leaders who followed him. Now artist Paul Peart-Smith offers the first graphic adaptation of Du Bois’s seminal work.
 
Peart-Smith’s graphic adaptation provides historical and cultural contexts that bring to life the world behind Du Bois’s words. Readers will get a deeper understanding of the cultural debates The Souls of Black Folk engaged in, with more background on figures like Booker T. Washington, the advocate of black economic uplift, and the Pan-Africanist minister Alexander Crummell. This beautifully illustrated book vividly conveys the continuing legacy of The Souls of Black Folk, effectively updating it for the era of the 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter.
 
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter