Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

W. E. B. Du Bois

Oct 2007 · Cosimo, Inc.

About this ebook

DuBois was the most influential black intellectual in American history, one whose voice and thoughts continue to enlighten and educate readers today, and this is a collection of his most inspired short-form writing. Collecting essays and poems from publications such as The Atlantic and The Journal of Race Development, this 1920 volume-provocative and aggressive and unflattering to the dominant white culture-raised the ire of many mainstream critics of the day, which continues to make it all the more valuable a read today. Included here are: . "The Shadow of Years" . "The Souls of White Folks" . "The Hands of Ethiopia" . "Of Work and Wealth" . "The Servant in the House" . "Of the Ruling of Men" . "The Damnation of Women" . "The Immortal Child" . "Of Beauty and Death" . "The Comet" . and more American writer, civil rights activist, and scholar WILLIAM EEDWARD BURGHARDT DUBOIS (1868-1963) was the first black man to receive a PhD from Harvard University. A co-founder of the NAACP, he wrote a number of important books, including The Philadelphia Negro (1899), Black Folk, Then and Now (1899), and The Negro (1915).

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.