The Correspondence Of W E B Du Bois Selections 1877 1934

Scholar, author, editor, teacher, reformer and civil rights leader, W.E.B. Du Bois (1888-1963) was a major figure in American life and one of the earliest proponents of equality for black Americans. This is the first volume of three and incorporates correspondence from 1877 to 1934.

An epistolary record of Du Bois's thought and accomplishments as student, teacher, editor, social critic, and reform leader

In “Beyond This Narrow Now” Nahum Dimitri Chandler shows that the premises of W. E. B. Du Bois's thinking at the turn of the twentieth century stand as fundamental references for the whole itinerary of his thought. Opening with a distinct approach to the legacy of Du Bois, Chandler proceeds through a series of close readings of Du Bois's early essays, previously unpublished or seldom studied, with discrete annotations of The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches of 1903, elucidating and elaborating basic epistemological terms of his thought. With theoretical attention to how the African American stands as an example of possibility for Du Bois and renders problematic traditional ontological thought, Chandler also proposes that Du Bois's most well-known phrase—“the problem of the color line”—sustains more conceptual depth than has yet been understood, with pertinence for our accounts of modern systems of enslavement and imperial colonialism and the incipient moments of modern capitalization. Chandler's work exemplifies a more profound engagement with Du Bois, demonstrating that he must be re-read, appreciated, and studied anew as a philosophical writer and thinker contemporary to our time.

Brian L. Johnson's remarkable biography of W.E.B. Du Bois describes the evolution of religious views from Du Bois's birth until his resignation as editor of Crisis magazine in 1934. W.E.B. Du Bois: Toward Agnosticism, 1868-1934 traces Du Bois's mounting skepticism through his earliest church experiences to his sociological training in Berlin culminating with his writings in Crisis magazine. Johnson argues that despite Du Bois's frequent use of Protestant religious rhetoric, the mature Du Bois was a critic of African American religious organizations and their leaders, and a scientifically oriented agnostic who did not adhere to any religious orthodoxy.