W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History

by Charisse Burden-Stelly, Gerald Horne

This revealing biography captures the full life of W.E.B. Du Bois--historian, sociologist, author, editor, and a leader in the fight to bring African Americans more fully into the American landscape as well as a forceful proponent of their leaving America altogether and returning to Africa. Drawing on extensive research and including new primary documents, sidebars, and analysis, Gerald Horne and Charisse Burden-Stelly offer a portrait of this remarkable man, paying special attention to the often-overlooked radical decades at the end of Du Bois's life.



The book also highlights Du Bois's relationships with and influence on civil rights activists, intellectuals, and freedom fighters, among them Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Louise Thompson Patterson, William Alphaeus Hunton, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The biography includes a selection of primary source documents, including personal letters, speeches, poems, and newspaper articles, that provide insight into Du Bois's life based on his own words and analysis.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, African American

272 pages, Hardcover

Published September 30, 2019

Reviews

[JRT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Charisse Burden-Stelly does a magnificent job detailing the long arch of the great W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois was one of a kind. He dedicated his life to the liberation of African-people around the world from imperialism, capitalism, and anti-Black racism. His prolific scholarship, rigorous research, and unceasing organization makes him the posterchild for the term “scholar activist.” As Burden-Stelly explains, this was all by design. This book does a wonderful job laying the groundwork and historical context for Du Bois’ sociopolitical theories and weaving in Du Bois’ own words and scholarship along the way. In doing so, Burden-Stelly depicts the evolution of a brilliant man whose lifetime spanned the Reconstruction era through the Civil Rights era. Du Bois merged his socialist underpinnings with iterations of Black Nationalism, militant anti-sexism, Pan Africanism, and Black Marxism, all towards the aim of liberating racialized groups and nations from the systems of domination that violently exploited and dispossessed them.

While the book does a great job highlighting Du Bois’ brilliance and dedication to Black liberation, it also spends time depicting and explaining some of Du Bois’ blind-spots and missteps (such as his infamous WWI “close ranks” agenda). The book also details Du Bois’ famous disputes with Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, explaining the differences in the political programs of these Black titans, and the periods of intense repression Du Bois faced from the United States government. Further, the book explains Du Bois’ fraught relationship with the most famous organization he help to found: the NAACP.

Obviously, no book can fully depict the impact and extent of Du Bois’ work and brilliance, as he was a polymath of the highest order who contributed to so many different academic disciplines. But this book does a tremendous job telling Du Bois’ story. Ultimately Du Bois’ life is indicative of the possibilities of a person who dedicates his or her being to humanism and eradication of oppression. Highly recommended.