The Negro

by W.E.B. Du Bois, Robert Gregg (Afterword)

Originally published: New York : Holt, 1915.

Africa is at once the most romantic and the most tragic of continents. So begins "The Negro," the first comprehensive history of African and African-derived people, from their early cultures through the period of the slave trade and into the twentieth century.

Originally published in 1915, the book was acclaimed in its time, widely read, and deeply influential in both the white and black communities, yet this beautifully written history is virtually unknown today. As a wellspring of critical studies of Africa and African Americans, it directly and indirectly influenced and inspired the works of scholars such as C. L. R. James, Eric Williams, Herbert Aptheker, Eric Foner, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. One of the most important books on Africa ever written, it remains fresh, dynamic, and insightful to this day.

"The Negro" is compelling on many levels. By comparing W. E. B. Du Bois's analysis with subsequent scholarship, Robert Gregg demonstrates in his afterword that "The Negro" was well ahead of its time: Du Bois's view of slavery prefigures both paternalistic perspectives and the materialist view that the system was part of the capitalist mode of production. On black contributions to the Civil War and to the emancipation of slaves, historians have yet to acknowledge all that Du Bois delineated. In his discussion of Reconstruction, Du Bois preempts much later historiography. His identification of segregation as an issue of class rather than race is almost forty years ahead of C. Vann Woodward's similar thesis. As to the matter of race, Du Bois is clear that the concept is a social construct having no foundation in biology.

Intellectually and historically prescient, Du Bois assumed globalization as a matter of course, so that his definition of the color line in "The Negro" links all colonized peoples, not just people of African descent. With the resolution of the Cold War and the ascendancy of the global market, Du Bois's sweeping vision of Africans and the diaspora seems more relevant now than at any time in the past hundred years.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Classics, African American, Philosophy

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1915

About the author

In 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced 'doo-boyz') was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made his name, in which he urged black Americans to stand up for their educational and economic rights. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited the NAACP's official journal, "Crisis," from 1910 to 1934. Du Bois turned "Crisis" into the foremost black literary journal. The black nationalist expanded his interests to global concerns, and is called the "father of Pan-Africanism" for organizing international black congresses.

Although he used some religious metaphor and expressions in some of his books and writings, Du Bois called himself a freethinker. In "On Christianity," a posthumously published essay, Du Bois critiqued the black church: "The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer." Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party and officially repudiated his U.S. citizenship at the end of his life, dying in his adopted country of Ghana. D. 1963.

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Reviews

[Luckngrace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I began this book because I've been a lot of Civil War history and CW fiction and hope to gain insight into those who were held in slavery. I got this classic 1912 history of the black race free on Kindle and was, frankly, expecting a dry read. I was pleasantly surprised and enlightened as I explored W.E.B. DuBois's account of his people's talents, religions and ever-expanding presence across Africa and, ultimately, around the world. Like a cheerleader, he praises as he informs and I get the feeling that it is the negro that he is trying to inform, indulge and teach of the greatness within themselves.

I recommend reading an actual paper book of The Negro because the Kindle version doesn't have the maps for easy reference that the real book contains.

[martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing over 100 years ago when memories of slavery, the Civil War and the betrayal of emancipation were still first hand experiences for many, this was a groundbreaking attempt to summarise the history of the peoples of Africa and their diaspora in the Americas.

As Du Bois states in his first paragraph, there was much more research still to be done before a fully, detailed, accurate history could be written - that may still today be the case - but he felt the need to write this book and share the theories and knowledge already then available. Why? It seems he wanted to educate and inform both sides of the racial divide in the US on a number of very important issues:

Is it correct to think of all Africans as a single, separate ethnic unit? A clearly defined race? His answer is a firm “No”. Using the limited information then available he demonstrates the immense diversity and intermingling of groups and cultures in Africa. While his conclusion on the unity of the sapiens species is correct, based on more modern DNA analysis and ethnographic research, his writing reflects the then mistaken view that mankind developed in Asia and migrated to Africa.

Is it correct to believe Africa was a primitive and uncivilised place with no culture, no social institutions, no economic progress. In short to believe Africans themselves are inferior. Again, no. He provides very little detail on the great African civilisations - probably because so little research was available to him - but he succeeds in showing that Africa had developed and could’ve developed further were it not for the enormous disruption and violence of the slave trade and internal conflicts caused by mass migrations of peoples.

Why and how were the slave trade and slavery so destructive and so debilitating on both sides of the Atlantic? Did the failure of African Americans to free themselves and then take the opportunities offered by emancipation just provide evidence that they were not equal or fit to be given full rights? Here he is at his strongest and most informative, showing with clear concise facts and examples that colonisation and slavery were not some kind of benevolent, civilising force and that numerous attempts were made by black people to escape or overthrow the restrictions put upon them. When given fair rights, people did develop and improve themselves. He also demonstrates how post emancipation reconstruction quickly was subverted and became the oppressive segregation which still colours racial politics today.

In his final pages he is however very positive about the future of both Africa and black people elsewhere in the world. In some ways he is right to expect and hope for more but we see all too clearly that it is not yet the utopia he envisioned.

This is an important historical record but obviously not the last word on African and African American history, nor should we expect it to be. It is at first a little hard to read because he writes using the common terms (mostly disparaging and degrading) of the mostly white society around him. Seeing negro, coloured, kaffir, mulatto, hottentot and so on written in a book by a black historian is unsettling. It’s a symptom of the society he was writing in that he had to use those terms.

He also assumes his readers have at least a reasonable level of 19th century US history - referring to the 15th Amendment, John Brown, the SS Creole mutiny, David Walker’s appeal and other important events without any explanation. Wikipedia became a useful background source for me - perhaps future ebooks editions could provide footnotes with more detail on some of this?

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Critical Review of The Negro by W.E.B. Dubois

The book I have chosen for review is The Negro, written by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. The book was originally published in 1915 by the Henry Holt and Company press out of New York, but the edition I read was a 2001 unabridged reprint of the first edition from Dover Publications Inc. This 2001 edition contains a new introductory note not included in the first. Aside from that, the edition is an exact republication of the original.
The Negro was arguably the first concerted effort from an African American scholar to provide a concise, yet comprehensive history of African peoples and their descendants in a global context. The book is divided into twelve chapters. For the most part, each chapter provides a regional study of Africa and the Americas, highlighting cultural contributions and historical achievements along with the challenges to societal progress experienced by the “Negro” inhabitants of these regions. It covers in the first eight chapters the history of African peoples according to the four directional divisions of geography. The next four chapters deal mostly with slavery, the African Diaspora, and the populations of enslaved Africans and their later emancipated descendants in the Americas.
The Negro makes a bold argument for the time of its publication. In accord with the contemporaneous scholarship of the period, he firmly proposes that the concept of race is sociological, and not based in biology. In the very first chapter he claims that “In fact it is generally recognized to-day that no scientific definition of race is possible.” He challenges the validity of the scientific justification for the biological reality of a “Negro” race by first detailing the ethnic diversity found in Africa from its very beginning. A direct confrontation with this racial classification based in biology is evident in text, for example, when Du Bois states, “In North America a Negro may be seven-eights white, since the term refers to any person of Negro descent,” he continues, “If we use the term in the same sense concerning the inhabitants of the rest of the world, we may say truthfully that Negroes have been among the leaders of civilization in every age of the world’s history from ancient Babylon to modern America…” In this same chain of reasoning he introduces the claim offered by scholars at the opposite end of the spectrum that “the ‘real’ Negro dwells in the small space between Niger and the Senegal.” Du Bois concludes that these extremities in the definitive conditions of the term seek to negate the historical contribution of African peoples and their descendants; in addition he believes that, ultimately, the more extreme positions based in an ideology of racial superiority cannot hold up to serious research or scientific scrutiny. With this argument at its core, it should be understood that The Negro provides a condensed assessment of the historical evidence of civilization and culture exhibited by peoples having phenotypes generally associated with those who are called “Negroes”. His chapters “The War of Races at Land’s End” and “The Trade in Men” take a markedly transnational approach to the history, which was also unique for time. The book unfolds in a chronological sequence that begins with the origins of civilization and ends with a brief coverage of social problems on a macro level contemporary with its publication.
In this last chapter on “The Negro Problems”, Du Bois outlines the four projected solutions to “settling the Negro Problem” and draws the reader’s attention to the pitfalls and shortcomings of each. Whereas the first solution, argued in a Marxian dialectic in terms of an “uplift” of the “millions of dark workers”, linked working class uprising along the “same paths with that of European and American Whites,” the second and third solutions represent the antithesis of the first, as they deal with slave-labor in lesser and greater forms. The fourth, once again, addresses transnational relationships of the precepts of racial superiority involved with policies of colonialisms.
It ends by discussing the emergence of Pan-Africanism and the rising discourse among “ethnic minorities” in their realization of their collective status as a global majority. Du Bois tell us “In a conscious sense of unity among colored races there is to-day only a growing interest.” In his essay on Pan-Africanism historian E. Akpan notes how Du Bois was himself active in Pan-African movement, having ties with such African Nationalists as Nigerian governor general, Nnamdi Azikiwe. Akpan goes as far as to claim that “The most important link between the literary and political streams of Pan-Africanism was William DuBois. For several years he dominated the Pan-African Movement.” This claim is supported when in the The Negro Du Bois concludes that there is a “strong brotherhood of Negro blood throughout the world, but the common cause of the darker races against the intolerable assumptions and insults of Europeans has already found expression,” and that “Most men in this world are colored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men.” In doing so, he places the future development of the world in the hands of the non-white population.
This lesser known work from Du Bois is of no little importance, as it certainly was one of the first of its kind. Additionally, during the time it was written, it provided a much needed argument from the perspective of African-American scholar in defense of a history which has been continuously and consciously suppressed. He was among first sociologists to use the latest in scientific understanding to argue for the enfranchisement and value of African peoples and their respective cultures. This aspect of the text would have significant repercussions on future African-American historians. Molefi Kete Asante would push the position further in his development of the Afrocentric approach to historicism. In his book The Afrocentric Idea he takes up the same question of the term “Negro” but extends the polemical engagement with the term to a more unsympathetic complete rejection of its validity. Asante believes “…the Eurocentric writer ties the African to the Negro, a false concept and a false history, separate from any spatial reality,” he goes on to tell us, “The word Negro did not exist prior to slavery; both the term and its application were products of the social and ecomonic context of the slave trade.” Even though Asante (logically) indentified Du Bois as a Eurocentric thinker one can see from this example the powerful impact of Du Bois’s precedent. Probably the most vital is that it challenged rationalizations of racism that were supposedly based in anthropological and biological research. By a successful repudiation of this form of academic racism, Du Bois provided the foundation for future advances in African American studies and its contributive potential for the overall advancement of knowledge.
That the work is of such importance, but relatively lesser known is a curious feature of its publication history. A testament to this apparently comparatively low level of readership is the fact out of several catalogs, databases and indexes (JSTOR, Proquest, WorldCat etc…) and also various basic and advanced keyword websearches, I literally could locate but two credible reviews of the work, and only of one which was published in an academic journal. In contrast, a search for reviews of The Souls of Black Folk results in numerable hits. The first review is in an article from the New York Times dated July 18, 1915 and titled “America's Greatest Problem: ‘The Negro.” The article first points out the literature of the opposition, namely Dr. Shufeldt's America's Greatest Problem: The Negro. During this journalistic critique it states that “A large portion of the book is devoted to trying to prove scientifically that all negroes come of cannibal stock, that they are hopelessly sensual, subject to "sex madness," and incapable of improvement. But the fact the writer [author unlisted in the archive:] is more likely to have been a liberal “Caucasian” male is suggested by the tone of the article. The writer, for example, concludes that “It [Shufeldt's book:] has the merit of sincerity, and it is not without substance; but its violence and prejudice destroy its value.”
Nonetheless this review for most part is supportive of Du Bois’s argument and indicates that there was generally a positive response to it, at least in intellectual circles of the Northern elite. Right in the beginning of its discussion of this text, the article points out that:

The author [Du Bois:] holds -- with modern science to support him -- that there are no definite lines separating the various human races, and that the comparative backwardness of the black race is due mainly to the fact that the interior of Africa contains no natural barriers such as protected early civilization in the Nile Valley and in Europe.

The article further supports the argument of the book when it states, “That there was such a thing as negro culture in Africa is abundantly attested.” One can, however, notice historical biases from the document. For example, the popularity of Washington’s credo was attested to at the end of the review when it claims that “As usual, Dr. Du Bois opposes Booker T. Washington's ideas of education, one of the few mistakes that he makes in this book.” But, again, its liberal position compels a supportive summation with, “The whole is written with an intellectual force, a breadth of learning, and a judicious poise that compel respect.
The second review by J. A. Bigham can be found in The Journal of Negro History, 1:2 dated April 1916. It is clear that this review was written for an audience of African-American scholars. This review is also supportive of Du Bois’s central argument, but one could argue to an even greater degree. For example it states, “The usual arguments that the backward state of Negro culture is due to the biological inferiority of the race he [Du Bois:] shows to be without foundation, since these arguments have been largely abandoned by creditable scholars.” The review does well in informing the reader as to which camp it is allied. In a laudatory self-referential note Bigham writes that “Much of the material in the book has been known for several years to readers of works of scholars on race questions.” It assumes a stance of intellectual superiority as to the validity of the main thesis here. The review goes on to challenge naysayers and detractors stating, “As is commonly the case, truths which tend to destroy deep-rooted prejudices reach general readers with considerable slowness.” It ends in complete accord with Du Bois’s work in claiming that “the facts set forth by the author will put many persons on their guard against individuals who continue to spread misinformation about the Negro race.”
Dubois’s The Negro, although I think correctly disproportionate in its coverage of the African continent, does in fact provide an interesting narrative of the history of African American in the United States. In his brief sketch of an intricate and complicated history, he was, again, novel with his aforementioned transnational approach. He deals with one of the key issues of African American history in providing a sober evaluation of the Reconstruction and its eventual demise. The narrative, however, like many more to come, would be the story of the struggle of overcoming against repeated backlashes in the cycles of violent repression which intensified during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. The fundamental historicity of this model is similarly applied in Robin Kelly and Earl Lewis’s History of African Americans from 1880. Concerning the organized efforts against the enfranchisement of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction era it states, “The Black Codes made black people susceptible to arrest for petty crimes and once imprisoned, made them available to be assigned to do forced labor.” Du Bois in The Negro addresses this part of the history in basically the same terms when he claims that influential Caucasian legislators added “… a series of labor laws making the exploitation of Negro labor more secure,” and that “All this legislation had to be accomplished in the face of the labor movement throughout the world, and particularly in the South, where it was beginning to enter among the white workers.” The History of Kelly and Lewis, which is fairly detailed in its coverage of African American involvement in political institutions and organizations, provides corroborating evidence of Du Bois’s account when, for instance, it tells us that “In 1891 labor activists in eastern Tennessee challenged the policies of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, which was by that time one of the major employers of convict labor.” However, Du Bois’s argument again, despite the broadness in its brevity, provides a more transnational and less optimistic attitude than the account of Kelly and Lewis. Du Bois, for example, provides a global similitude of modern institutionalized slavery in legalized forms. He notes that “The peonage systems in parts of the United States and labor systems of many of the African colonies of Great Britain and Germany illustrate this solution.”
According to the new introductory note in this 2001 edition, this book was partly written in response to the ideologies of racism which were permeating in the media and literary circles of the period. It cites a speech from Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi where he declares that the ‘Negro’ “has never had any civilization except that which has been inculcated by a superior race.” Taking in consideration the above example one can understand the surmounting force of the opposition Du Bois was attempt to directly confront. Yet time and method have proven that Du Bois was on the “right” side of the facts, and of history, in this case. With that in mind, his audience, as reflected by the reviews, would have consisted primarily of both Caucasian and African American academics; but as we can discern from the tone, syntax, and style of the essay writing employed in this book, the text was directed towards a Caucasian readership. By that rationale, as stated by Bigham’s review, it was most likely written as a refutation and correction of misinformation about Africans and their descendants that was circulating at that time.
Although Du Bois is assuredly one of the greatest minds in the history of African American scholarship this book is not without its flaws. Firstly, within arguably one of his academic virtues, by keeping up with the latest in anthropological consensus, he was subject to relying upon a highly questionable fundamental argument. As the Cambridge Companion to Du Bois’s writings notes, “The Negro reflected speculations on the geographical origins of the human species, prevalent at the time. Du Bois attributed the origins of mankind to Asia, rather than to Africa…” Moreover, Du Bois’s expertise in sociology is evident with the numerous demographic statistics he supplies as evidence for his thesis. The Durkheimian structuralist-functionalism can be felt throughout the work in addition to certain elements of the Marxist conflict theory. Resultantly, he falls into the trap that other sociological histories (i.e. J. Diamonds Gun, Germs, and Steel) have suffered in that some his historical evidence is cursory, or even altogether erroneous or misleading. Du Bois writes, for example, that “These were not days of decadence, but a period that gave the world Shakespeare, Martin Luther, and Raphael, Haroun-al-Raschid and Abraham Lincoln.” Being that Du Bois is referring to a period in between 1450 to 1850, a reference to Harun al’ Rashid (736-809 C.E.) is clearly suspect. If this reference was to be inclusive of the longer history of African slavery in the Islamic Empire it does not specify that such is the intention. The sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566) perhaps would have been a better figure for Du Bois to cite. This sort of misrepresentation leaves the work vulnerable to the criticism of historians.
To summarize, The Negro, overall, despite being relatively unnoticed in comparison with his other works, is a valuable text both conceptually and contextually. On the conceptual level it set the precedent for a serious study in ethnic history undertaken by an “ethnic minority”. Contextually it challenged the false academic argument for biological racial superiority and concomitantly disproved the case for social Darwinism by relating the history of African and African-American cultural contributions. As such it has both inspired and drawn the criticism of historians and ethnic studies scholars alike. But its value only becomes richer in a further engagement with the text. His largely forward-thinking, transnational, Pan-African approach to history is one, I believe, is of particular interest; and I am often compelled to read other histories which take on this dimension of study.

End Notes

W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications 2001), p. 7.
Ibid., p. 82-83.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 140.
Ibid., p. 146.
Molefi K. Asante, and Abdulai S. Vandi, Contemporary Black Thought: Alternative Analyses in Social and Behavioral Science. Sage focus editions, 26 (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980), p. 229.
Ibid.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro, p.146.
Molefi K. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp.10-11.
"America's Greatest Problem: ‘The Negro’ -- Three Students of the Subject View the Racial Question from Different Angles and Offer Suggestions for Its Solution” in New York Times July 18, 1915, New York Times on the Web, http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05... (March, 2010).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Bigham, J. A., and W. E. B. DuBois. 1916. "Review of The Negro". Journal of Negro History. 1, no. 2: 217-218, The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. 1916 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13642/... (March, 2010).
Ibid.
Parenthesis added for emphasis, Ibid.
Ibid.
Robin D. G. Kelley, and Earl Lewis, To Make Our World Anew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 16
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro, p. 134.
Robin D. G. Kelley, and Earl Lewis, To Make Our World Anew, p. 17.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro, p. 142.
Ibid., p. 7.
Wilson J. Moses “Africa and Pan-Africanism in the Thought of Du Bois” in Cambridge Companion to W.E.B. Du Bois, ed. Shamoon Zamir (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 121.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro, p. 90.




Further Reading

All African Students' Conference, B. F. Bankie, and K. J. Mchombu. 2008. Pan-Africanism/African nationalism: strengthening the unity of Africa and its diaspora. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press.

Azikiwe, Nnamdi. 1961. Zik, a selection from the speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe. Cambridge [Eng.:]: University Press.

Iriye, Akira, and Pierre-Yves Saunier. 2009. The Palgrave dictionary of transnational history. Basingstoke [England:]: Palgrave Macmillan.

Blum, Edward J. 2007. W.E.B. Du Bois, American prophet. Politics and culture in modern America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bullock, Thomas Austin. 1880. Wild Africa: the benighted continent of to-day : containing strange pictures of negro savage life. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.

[Carlos Apodaca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose of Du Bois is just as relevant today as is was over 100 years ago. This historical text is informative and inspiring.

[Joseph Mundo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Negro was an interesting and informative book, but also one that I believe needs to be read with discernment and followed by further research.

Du Bois attempts something incredibly difficult in a relatively short book: covering an enormous amount of African history across a massive continent. He moves through different regions, peoples, civilizations, kingdoms, migrations, religions, conquests, slavery, European involvement, and eventually the African experience beyond Africa. There is a tremendous amount of information here.

That was both a strength and a weakness for me.

At times, there was so much movement between different parts of Africa and different periods of history that it became difficult to follow chronologically. I almost think this book may be more useful when studied by individual sections rather than simply read straight through. Take a subject Du Bois introduces, investigate it further, verify his sources and conclusions, and build upon it from there.

That last part is particularly important because this book was published in 1915. More than a century of additional archaeology, historical research, anthropology, and scholarship is now available to us. Du Bois provides many avenues worth investigating, but the responsibility ultimately falls on the modern reader to determine where subsequent evidence has strengthened, qualified, or challenged his conclusions.

I also understand what Du Bois was attempting to accomplish much better after finishing the book. He was writing during a period when Black people were routinely portrayed as inherently inferior and African history was frequently minimized or treated as though Africa had contributed little to civilization. Du Bois pushes strongly against that narrative by showing African civilizations, political systems, commerce, culture, military power, intellectual development, and contributions to world history.

That part of the book deserves recognition.

Where I began separating from Du Bois was toward the larger conclusion I felt he was constructing. At times, I felt the argument moved beyond demonstrating that Black people were not inferior toward suggesting a particular moral promise or superiority associated with the Black race. That is where I could no longer follow him.

My Christian worldview leads me to a different conclusion:

The fundamental problem with humanity is not the color of man’s skin. It is the sin within man.

History demonstrates this repeatedly.

Europeans have oppressed other peoples. Africans have oppressed Africans. Arab and African Muslim powers participated in conquest and enormous slave systems. People carrying the name of Christianity have committed atrocities completely contrary to the teachings of Christ. Governments, kingdoms, tribes, religious institutions, and individuals throughout history have repeatedly found ways to justify terrible things when power, money, territory, ideology, or self-interest were involved.

I also believe the role of Islamic expansion, conquest, slavery, and subsequent African participation in those systems deserved greater attention. Islam’s history in Africa is complicated and certainly cannot be reduced entirely to conquest—trade, scholarship, migration, political relationships, and voluntary conversion also played significant roles. But military conquest, religious-political domination, taxation of non-Muslims, warfare, and extensive slave systems are also part of that history and should not be minimized.

The same discernment should be applied to Christianity. A person being born into a supposedly “Christian” civilization does not make that person a follower of Christ. Christianity imposed as cultural identity, political identity, or birthright is not the same thing as repentance and genuine faith in Jesus Christ.

And more than a century after Du Bois wrote this book, I don’t believe humanity has demonstrated that our underlying moral condition has improved simply because some of our social structures have changed.

Societies are remarkably capable of condemning the accepted sins of previous generations while rationalizing the accepted sins of their own.

From my Christian pro-life perspective, approximately 73 million abortions occurring globally each year are a sobering modern example. I am not equating the historical institution of slavery with abortion; I am comparing humanity’s ability to normalize actions involving human life when society provides sufficient economic, political, cultural, or personal justification for doing so.

The particular sin may change. The condition of the human heart has not.

That ultimately became my biggest takeaway from reading Du Bois. His book successfully challenged the idea that African history begins with slavery or that African peoples somehow lacked civilization, achievement, or historical importance. But I don’t believe racial elevation is the proper answer to racial degradation.

Scripture provides a more consistent explanation for me. Every human being possesses tremendous worth because mankind was created in the image of God. Yet every human being, regardless of race, also shares the corruption of sin.

No skin color gives us immunity from either truth.

That is why I finished The Negro appreciating much of what Du Bois brought to my attention without accepting every conclusion he appeared to draw from it. In fact, some of the most valuable parts of the book were those that made me stop and say, “I need to investigate this further.”

There is a tremendous amount of knowledge packed into a relatively short work. I simply wish it had been organized more chronologically and that some subjects had received deeper treatment before moving to the next.

3.5/5 stars.

Informative, historically significant, and worth reading—but also worth questioning, verifying, and studying beyond the pages Du Bois gives us.

[DJ Dorsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was quite interesting if you are curious about what happened to freed men after slavery in the US. When we are in school we mainly hear of slavery from Africa to the US. I was fascinated to find out the other countries involved in the slave trade. Good book to expand on your curiosities of the origins of Africans and the indigenous people and how they affected the population in which I feel you wouldn’t get an accurate Census count.

[Dennis Napier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely educational and highly recommended

My review of this book is that I am extremely impressed with the intelligence of Mr. Du Bois! Yet, I do find that there is a common tendency within the writers of African peoples and that is there's a tendency to use the term civil / civilized in what I think just to be inappropriate. This comment is taken from the preface of this writing…
“The time has not yet come for a complete history of the Negro peoples. Archæological research in Africa has just begun, and many sources of information in Arabian, Portuguese, and other tongues are not fully at our command; and, too, it must frankly be confessed, racial prejudice against darker peoples is still too strong in so-called civilized centers for judicial appraisement of the peoples of Africa.”
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt). The Negro . Kindle Edition.
Now as you can see how that in the very beginning of this book, he used the term “strong and so-called civilized centers for judicial appraisement of the peoples of Africa.”
That’s what I find to be somewhat distressful. When you do a quick search in this book you'll find at least about 83 usages of this word "civil." Now as I mentioned, this book's value is it cannot be overstated how important and how valuable it is to the psychology and the recovery of the African peoples as they see themselves. But when you read this book just be attentive to this comparative analysis of the African peoples and other so-called peoples. This is critical because you can't compare the African peoples with a barbaric people that have literally went across this planet murdering, raping, kidnapping whole families and intentionally destroying families and practice the complete destruction of children, invasion under the term of colonization and indeed to include genocide! Attempting to appraise African peoples with this word “civilization” by comparing them with the European bodies of people is a terrible error in judgement! You can't suggest that civilization can be placed into the hands of these people and to even consider that these bodies of people were civilized. Everything about their invasive history and genocidal behavior clearly shows that their so-called civilization standards are false! That is the distress that I find not only in Mr. Du Bois's book here “The Negro”, but I find this comparative analysis in most of the writings that I have completed. Even though it's distressing when I read it being used by white authors or European descendants, it is more distressing when I read this comparative analysis being presented by black authors or better said African in origin peoples. But this book is extremely valuable, and Mr. Du Bois cannot be questioned as to his intelligence and the research that he has completed in writing this book. I therefore strongly recommend that if you have not read this book especially if you are an African American in your origin, you really need to read this book while attentive to this comparative analysispractice that seems to be a common and acceptable comparative standard that's hinted at under the terms civil, civilization…etc.

[Sean McGrath · Rating 3 out of 5]

The saddest part about WEB DuBois’s treatise on The Negro is the hopeful tone with which he ends it. He begins in Africa some 6,000 years ago. And this is the weakest part of the book. He attempts to create one unbroken chain from “the first Negros in Africa” to, using his terms for continuity, Negros today (or 1913’s today. Which would be our yesterday’s. Anyway). But the kingdoms of Africa: Punt, Egypt, Abyssinia, and the tribes of Africa: the Bantu, the Zulu, the Tutsi, they get what amounts to a touch-and-go style treatment, the “there, I mentioned them, onto the next piece of history” style of writing in which the writer has a checklist of ideas that need to be touched on. There’s no analysis here, nor is there much analysis in the “Negro Culture” section, which suffers from that same idiosyncrasy.

But the book really hits its stride in the part about The Negro in America, and it’s here that DuBois’s historical analyses are more relevant than ever. He talks of white supremacy as a self-perpetuating lie, of the choice white southerners make to maintain a semblance of superiority over The Negro instead of working with them to improve everyone. It’s a case of Trumpism described over 100 years before Trump: “eating shit to own the libs.” Hence the emotion of sadness: DuBois positions The Negro to ascend to his “rightful place in government and in society” and drops all these numbers about increasing population and literacy. And we have today a population even more determined to oppress others if it means they can feel like they’re getting a rung higher on the ladder when, in reality, they’ll always be too small to reach it.

[Mochee's Kid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book on black history that I read. Found it on Project Gutenberg on my little phone and couldn't do anything else until I finished it. The book was already 100 years old when I read it, and modern research had already rendered a lot of what Dubois wrote outdated. I was aware of this at the time, but the book was still such a well-written scholarly little piece that I was still enthralled by it. I have gone back to read it twice since then.

Read this book for its beauty and the brilliance of Dubois' mind.

[Jessica Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yet another piece of history

Do NOT use this as a reference regarding human migration, archaeology or race. Between additional archaeological research and DNA, all the material in this book has been replaced. The beauty of DNA is it lands our human origins in Africa, not Asia. I always find that little fact amusing. Still, from a HISTORICAL perspective, this book is good for outlining the knowledge and beliefs of the time.

[Utsob Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

মানুষ যত সিভিলাইজড হয় (বা নিজের মধ্যে সিভিলাইজড হওয়ার ভ্যানিটি যত বেশি বহন করে)— যেকোনো নৃগোষ্ঠীকে শোষণ করাটা তত বেশি নৈতিক দ্বিধায় ফেলে। সেই দ্বিধার সাথে যুঝতে সবচেয়ে এফেক্টিভ কাজ হচ্ছে আলোচ্য নৃগোষ্ঠীকে সাবহিউম্যান বা ইনহিউম্যান বলে প্রতিপন্ন করা। এটা করা হয়েছে নিগ্রোদের সাথে, ইহুদিদের সাথে।

বইজের এই বই আসলে সেই রকম প্রচেষ্টাগুলোর সাথে লড়াইয়ের বই। আফ্রিকা ও দাসত্বের ইতিহাস, নৃতত্ত্ব সবকিছু মিলিয়ে সাধারণের জন্য লেখা বই।

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Du Bois presents a rather impressive overview of the African race in this small volume... writing in the early 1900s, he states in his opening lines that a comprehensive history of the negro cannot or has not as yet been done, thus his review touches some topics just barely. Any comprehensive look into Africa its history or its peoples is quite a task, but for me, reading this enabled some more knowledge on my own ancestry...

[Matthew Fazio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to read-- comparable to reading the Bible: the early chapters are similar to the Old Testament, naming supposedly important African tribes (and leaders) with their migrations/conquests, but with no further information as to why this is all significant.

The 2nd half of the book is more like the New Testament, having more direction and explanation which makes absorbing the data presented much easier.

[Brother Chason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written when the the world was looking towards Asia as the home of the first people.

This is the first attempt to go through dark skin people’s history chronologically.

It’s an interesting read and I learned a lot about kingdoms/civilizations I hadn’t heard about until now.

[Rhonda Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an amateur historian, I find W.E.B. Dubois's work very thought-provoking. I read this book in only three days and found it very educational and informative. This book explores the history of people of African descent as well as the sociological and historical impact of the African slave trade in the new world and the ravages of the slave trade in Africa. Mr. Dubois studies the history and phenomenon of systematic racism the rife effects of slavery and the Jim Crow policies that were in place after the Civil War and Reconstruction. His study reveals some of the hard facts and sublime truths about the effects of enslavement on people of African descent on African society as well as the societies in the New World.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone interested in the historical and sociological facts concerning racism, slavery, and Jim Crow policies. Dr. Dubois is an eloquent writer as well as being the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Sociology. His work is factual and challenges many preconceived notions people had about race, society, and the history of Africans in their homelands and in the Americas as well as the Caribbean Islands.
This is a highly recommended book and I hope that anyone and everyone will take time to read and relish this book. It is totally worth the money and the 5-star rating!

[Krissy Louise Treadwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Give it a read even if you don't think this is up your alley. (And if you aren't exactly Team DuBois, don't fret. He only devotes about two sentences to bashing Booker T. Washington.) He admits from the start that a lack of access to records means some of his facts may be wrong and that pretty much excuses some of the mistakes throughout. Otherwise it is a really interesting and comprehensive overview of the history of the African people.

Emphasis on REALLY interesting. Especially if this is your first encounter with African history. I suspect a lot of people THINK they know a thing or two about African history. Unless you have done extensive study, this book is a great way to show you that you literally only know one or two things about the extensive and complex history of this vast continent its diaspora of people.

If you never again in your life give a second though to the history of Africa, that's fine. Just at least let your education include this book. There is a lot people don't know about Africans and in turn, a lot they don't know about themselves. This book is a nice start.

Sorry to get all Yoda on you guys but... it happens.

[Suzanne Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for a sociology class! It was a great resource in writing my final thesis on the segregation that still exists in the education system and how that affects different races within the United States. Du Bois was a very intelligent and insightful author and activist, and his insight is invaluable, even all these years later. I am glad that it was a suggested read in class because I don't think I would have read it on my own. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history of the struggle for equality in the US, especially back in the early to mid 20th century. It's also a great resource for anyone studying/writing papers on race relations, sociological concepts dealing with race, etc.

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a history book, much of it is out of date (it was written in 1925) and not particularly well written. However, as a document illustrating how important it was during the apartheid period of the U.S. to see how important it was to African-Americans to recognize their history, it was invaluable. It reminds you of how far we have to go in this country in acknowledging the history of civiliations other than European.

[Royce Ratterman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for personal research. I found this work of immense interest.
This work was one of my resource sources while ghost authoring the historical fiction novel "I, Slave: 1746-1963" for E.MH Ratterman.
I found this book's contents helpful and inspiring - number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
Overall, this work is also a good resource for the researcher and enthusiast.

[Royce Ratterman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for personal research. I found this work of immense interest.
This work was one of my resource sources while ghost authoring the historical fiction novel "I, Slave: 1746-1963" for E.MH Ratterman.
I found this book's contents helpful and inspiring - number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
Overall, this work is also a good resource for the researcher and enthusiast.

[P.S. Carrillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great over view of the history of Africa and African Americans by a supreme intellect. It reminded me of Carlos Fuentes's The Buried Mirror, a brief history of Latin America. Both men attempted to give an identity to people who have been overshadowed by the European narrative of history.

[TL Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was as I expected it to be long and with distant words. W.E.B. Is a genius when it comes to the education of the Negro but he looses me every time with this elitist perspectives.

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Clayton Brannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have any doubts to the contributions that the Negro race has made to this world then you need go no farther than this book. Great read with lots of details in such a short book.