The Souls of Black Folk

“I was assigned this book of essays in college and it was transformative for me as a person and a writer. Du Bois captures the complexity and the interiority of what it’s like to be black in the United States, and even though it was written more than a century ago, the way Du Bois writes makes it feel like he wrote this book last year.” –Tomi Adeyemi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone, in the Good Morning America Book Club “A work that is still relevant today … Vividly depict[s] what it was like to be black … Many of the ideas that Du Bois outlined in the book still endure… . [A book] for anyone who wants to understand America.” –Lynn Neary, NPR’s Morning Edition

”[The Souls of Black Folk is] the foundation on which Du Bois built a lifetime of ideas, and on which the black and antiracist intelligentsia continues to build today… . In 1903 … black newspapers … typically shouted in unison, ‘SHOULD BE READ AND STUDIED BY EVERY PERSON, WHITE AND BLACK.’ … And today it still SHOULD BE READ AND STUDIED BY EVERY PERSON.” –Ibram X. Kendi, from the Introduction

WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DU BOIS (1868-1963) was one of the greatest African American intellectuals – a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation’s history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, he penned his epochal masterpiece, “The Souls of Black Folk”, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into black life at the turn of the twentieth century still ring true.

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