W. E. B. Du Bois by David Levering Lewis
W. E. B. Du Bois was a pivotal figure in American history, recognized for his profound contributions to sociology, civil rights, and African American literature. Born in 1868 in western Massachusetts, he faced some racism but experienced a relatively supportive environment compared to the harsher realities many African Americans faced in the South. Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895, with a groundbreaking dissertation that examined the African slave trade. His influential works, including "The Philadelphia Negro" and "The Souls of Black Folk," addressed the complexities of African American identity and societal issues, introducing concepts like "double consciousness" and the "talented tenth."
Du Bois was a vocal critic of contemporary civil rights leaders such as Booker T. Washington and co-founded the Niagara Movement, which later evolved into the NAACP. Throughout his life, he advocated for racial equality, launched campaigns against Jim Crow laws, and explored socialist ideologies, particularly during the Great Depression. In his later years, Du Bois's views became more radical, leading him to join the Communist Party and move to Ghana. His legacy endures through his extensive writings and activism, making him a central figure in discussions about race, identity, and social justice in America.
Subject Terms
W. E. B. Du Bois by David Levering Lewis
First published: Volume 1: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, 1993; Volume 2: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963, 2000
Type of work: Biography
Time of work: 1868-1963
Locale: United States; Europe; Africa
Principal Personages:
W. E. B. Du Bois , a major African American scholarBooker T. Washington , a leading educator who frequently quarreled with Du BoisWalter White , Du Bois’s rival, who headed the NAACPWilliam Monroe Trotter , the militant editor of theBoston Guardian Marcus Garvey , Du Bois’s adversary, who headed the Universal Negro Improvement AssociationJohn Hope , Du Bois’s lifelong friend, who was president of Morehouse CollegeJames Weldon Johnson , Du Bois’s associate at the NAACPPaul Robeson , a singer, actor, left-wing activist, and Du Bois’s good friend
Form and Content
When David Levering Lewis initially decided to write a biography of W. E. B. Du Bois, he planned on producing a medium-length, one-volume work, a task that he expected to take about five years. As he became increasingly fascinated by Du Bois’s eventful, ninety-five-year-long life, however, the project itself became longer and longer, until it was finally published in two large volumes totaling 1,449 pages, with 232 pages devoted to documentation.
Growing up in a small town in western Massachusetts, Du Bois experienced some racism, but Lewis observes that the location was an “incomparably kinder place” than the lynch-law South, where most African Americans lived at the time. After Du Bois graduated from Harvard University in 1890, he studied at Berlin University for two years, and while there he learned about socialism and Marxism. He then returned to Harvard for graduate study, and in 1895 he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. His dissertation, devoted to the end of the African slave trade to the United States, was published as the first volume of the Harvard Historical Studies series.
A prolific writer, Du Bois published hundreds of articles and twenty-two books, including five novels, and he helped establish four journals. His first book, The Philadelphia Negro (1899), which was sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, was a sociological study of African American neighborhoods, including family structures, crime, and economic conditions. Lewis observes that this was among the first of the sociological accounts to reject the idea of deterministic laws and to emphasize the roles of “human choice, wish, whim, and prejudice.”
In his influential collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folks (1903), Du Bois predicted that “the color line” would be the central problem of the century, and he popularized the concept of “double consciousness,” which referred to the frustrations of preserving a black identity while making the necessary adjustments to coexist within the dominant American culture. He was highly critical of the work of the famous president of Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington, finding particular fault with Washington’s accommodation with white supremacy and his failure to promote higher education for the elitist professions. While engaged in this controversy, Du Bois introduced the term “talented tenth,” writing, “the Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.”
In 1905, Du Bois joined with William Monroe Trotter and other proponents of racial equality to form the Niagara Movement, which soon evolved into the country’s premier civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). From 1910 until 1934, Du Bois served as editor of the association’s magazine, The Crisis, which he used to campaign against Jim Crow and in favor of federal legislation against lynching. In 1915, he helped organize the Second Pan-African Congress, and he also published The Negro, which Lewis describes as the pioneering “building block in Afrocentric historiography.”
Du Bois became increasingly radical as he became older. Like many other intellectuals he turned to the theories of Karl Marx during the Great Depression. Lewis observes that Du Bois became “mesmerized” with Marxism as a science of society that “made history make sense.” An opponent of U.S. policies during the Cold War, Du Bois viewed the Soviet Union as the “most hopeful country on earth” and was convinced that “capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction.” He finally joined the Communist Party in 1961, even though he believed that the “iron law of whiteness” in the United States doomed any attempt to create a nonracial socialism.
Lewis observes that Du Bois always assumed that “the enemies of his enemies were his friends in Africa and Asia,” a belief that led him during World War II to join Japan’s so-called Negro Propaganda Operations, directed by Hikida Yasuichi. During the Cold War, moreover, he championed the policies of the Soviet Union. As he became increasingly pessimistic about overcoming white racism, he advocated a program of partial segregation based on the self-interests of African Americans, and his pessimism separated him from Walter White and other NAACP leaders. Hoping to promote the “anticapitalist solidarity of the darker world,” he moved to Ghana at the age of ninety-three.
Critical Context
Lewis’s mammoth biography is widely recognized as the most complete and scholarly work written about Du Bois. Both of the volumes were awarded Pulitzer Prizes as well as other prestigious awards. The biography is based on truly exhaustive research, utilizing published writings, archival collections, and numerous oral interviews. In addition to this book, Lewis has published at least six other works about American and European history, all of which are highly respected. Another noted historian, John Hope Franklin, has even declared that Lewis is the most outstanding African American historian of his generation.
Bibliography
Fikes, Robert, Jr. “Surprise: There Are Black History Professors Who Don’t Teach Black History.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 31 (Spring, 2001): 124-128. Short essay observing that Lewis and other African Americans teach a large variety of courses in colleges and universities.
Lemert, Charles. Review of W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, by David Levering Lewis. Contemporary Sociology 24 (March, 1995): 164-166. Emphasizes Du Bois’s importance to the development of sociology.
Lewis, David Levering. “Harlem Renaissance.” In Africana, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kwame Anthony Appiah. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999. Useful survey that helps readers understand the cultural background of Du Bois’s work from about 1917 to 1935.
Lewis, David Levering. “The Soul of David Levering Lewis.” Interview by Ronald Roach. Black Issues in Higher Education 21 (December 30, 2004): 32-35. Revealing interview, in which Lewis declares his agreement with many of Du Bois’s ideas, including his radical critique of U.S. capitalism.
Luna, Christopher. “Lewis, David Levering.” Current Biography 62 (May, 2001): 77-82. Rather detailed account of Lewis’s life and career.
Schafer, Axel. “W. E. B. Du Bois, German Thought, and the Racial Divide in American Progressivism, 1892-1909.” The Journal of American History 88 (December, 2001): 925-949. Refutes Lewis’s argument that Du Bois’s early identification with European high culture resulted in an ideology of culture that limited his reformist aspirations during his early years.
Sevitch, Benjamin. “W. E. B. Du Bois and Jews: A Lifetime of Opposing Anti-Semitism.” Journal of African American History 87 (Summer, 2002): 323-337. Includes an interesting discussion of Lewis’s criticism of Du Bois’s comparison between Germany’s legal anti-Semitism and the extra-legal racial oppression of the United States.
Taylor, Quintard. “W. E. B. Du Bois and Race in America.” Review of W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, by David Levering Lewis. Reviews in American History 22 (December, 1994): 662-667. Comprehensive and perceptive analysis of Lewis’s biography.