A Negro Schoolmaster in the South
W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1899 account as a young, black schoolmaster in the South
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a sociologist, historian, writer, and civil-rights activist. He was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, and he played a significant role in the creation of the NAACP. His landmark essay collection, The Souls of Black Folk, was published in 1903.
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Frances Benjamin Johnston / Library of Congress The African Roots of War
After Belgium, France, and Britain carved up Africa among themselves, Germany felt the need to catch up. W. E. B. Du Bois, who by 1915 had established himself as one of America’s leading writers and civil-rights activists, saw this competition for colonies as an underlying cause of the war.
ADOC/Corbis Of the Training of Black Men
Taking issue with Booker T. Washington, the author argues that blacks should attend college.
Currior & Ives Lithography Company/National Portrait Gallery Strivings of the Negro People
Du Bois gives voice to the aspirations of black Americans in the post-Civil War world.
The Freedmen’s Bureau
A leading black intellectual surveys the government’s efforts to aid the freed slaves.
Metcalf & Clark/National Portrait Gallery The African Roots of War
“In a very real sense Africa is a prime cause of this terrible overturning of civilization which we have lived to see.”
Of the Training of Black Men
“What place in the future development of the South ought the negro college and college-bred man to occupy?”
Currior & Ives Lithography Company/National Portrait Gallery The Freedmen’s Bureau
“No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth, — What shall be done with slaves?”
Alfred R. Waud / Library of Congress Strivings of the Negro People
“It dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.”
C. M. Battey / Library of Congress
