Du Bois, W.E.B. (1868 - 1963).
L i f e
- born free, of mixed origin, chiefly black
- did not have to struggle for survival x B. T. Washington
- received a cosmopolitan education, studied both in America and Europe and travelled widely
- became a scholar reflecting on the status of Afro-Americans in the post-Civil War America
- turned to a social activist in the period of violent racism and lynching in the 1890s
- responded in more complex ways to a complex social world than was possible for B. T. Washington
W o r k
- a major militant social activist
- promoted the rights of Afro-Americans in terms of education
- ed. The Crisis, journal of NAACP = National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People
“The Niagara Movement”:
- declared the need for Afro-Americans to demand social equality also by militant means
The Souls of Black Folk (1903):
- characterised the nature of his work by the words:
(a) ‘the souls’ of Afro-Americans
(b) ‘the veil’ thrown by the whites on the Afro-Americans to make them invisible > later influenced R. Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952)
(c) ‘the problem’ of racism
(d) the ‘crisis’ the entire society will have to pass before the established of justice
Quote
"An American, a Negro... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder".
From The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
Basics
(Photo: Cornelius Marion Battey. 1918. Source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
W(illiam) E(dward) B(urghardt) Du Bois. (1868 - 1963). African-American. -
Work
Political and social activist. Military promoter of Afro-American civil rights. -
Genre
Political writing.
Literature
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1991.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994.
McQuade, Donald, gen.ed. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper & Collins, 1996.
Ruland, Richard, Malcolm Bradbury. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
Vančura, Zdeněk, ed. Slovník spisovatelů: Spojené státy americké. Praha: Odeon, 1979.