Dover Publications</br></br>Product Description</br></br><div>This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (18681963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays first published together in 1903 he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind. He also charges that the strategy of accommodation to white supremacy advanced by Booker T. Washington then the most influential black leader in America would only serve to perpetuate black oppression.<BR>Publication of The Souls of Black Folk was a dramatic event that helped to polarize black leaders into two groups: the more conservative followers of Washington and the more radical supporters of aggressive protest. Its influence cannot be overstated. It is essential reading for everyone interested in African-American history and the struggle for civil rights in America.</div></br></br>Amazon.com Review</br></br>William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African America" intellectuals--a sociologist?? historian?? novelist?? and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk?? Harvard?? and the University of Berlin?? Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece?? <I>The Souls of Black Folk</I>?? in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.<p>  With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose?? the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty?? the neoslavery of the sharecropper?? illiteracy?? miseducation?? and lynching?? to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in "On Booker T. Washington and Others??"where Du Bois criticizes his famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races??"he writes?? furt