Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Jan 1920 · Harcourt, Brace

About this ebook

"First published in 1920, this groundbreaking work by the pioneering African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) is not only original and probing but also experimental in presentation, ranging from detailed sociopolitical analyses to lyrical and poetic presentations. After an opening autobiographical essay, Du Bois launches a series of critical commentaries on some of the most important issues pertaining to White-Black relations, including White bigotry, Black voting rights, and Black-White labor relations. Many of Du Bois's criticisms of a world social and economic system that marginalizes people of color still resonate today, especially in debates over globalization. Another perennially relevant issue addressed in this book is the fate of Africa after colonialism. Du Bois's farsightedness in advocating for women's rights, in emphasizing the critical importance of childhood education for all races, and in critiquing an unjust economic system that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a few is as penetrating today as it was when he first penned his views over eighty years ago"--Amazon.com (a later edition).

About the author

Civil rights leader and author, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868. He earned a B.A. from both Harvard and Fisk universities, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and studied at the University of Berlin. He taught briefly at Wilberforce University before he came professor of history and economics at Atlanta University in Ohio (1896-1910). There, he wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903), in which he pointed out that it was up to whites and blacks jointly to solve the problems created by the denial of civil rights to blacks. In 1905, Du Bois became a major figure in the Niagara Movement, a crusading effort to end discrimination. The organization collapsed, but it prepared the way for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in which Du Bois played a major role. In 1910, he became editor of the NAACP magazine, a position he held for more than 20 years. Du Bois returned to Atlanta University in 1932 and tried to implement a plan to make the Negro Land Grant Colleges centers of black power. Atlanta approved of his idea, but later retracted its support. When Du Bois tried to return to NAACP, it rejected him too. Active in several Pan-African Congresses, Du Bois came to know Fwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, and Jono Kenyatta the president of Kenya. In 1961, the same year Du Bois joined the Communist party, Nkrumah invited him to Ghana as a director of an Encyclopedia Africana project. He died there on August 27, 1963, after becoming a citizen of that country.