The Gift of Black Folk (1924) is a book of essays by W. E. B. Du Bois. Written while the author was using his role at The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, to publish emerging Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance, The Gift of Black Folk is a purposeful work of history which revises the narrative of European and British influence and emphasizes the outsized role of African Americans in building the nation and establishing its definitive culture. “[Despite] slavery, war and caste, and despite our present Negro problem, the American Negro is and has been a distinct asset to this country and has brought a contribution without which America could not have been.” This thesis could not be stated clearly enough. Recognizing, in the words of Dr. King, “that the keystone in the arch of oppression was the myth of inferiority, ” Du Bois set out to revise American history to properly tell the story of his people. As he does in his magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America (1935), Du Bois recognizes that the failures of the Reconstruction era were due in large part to an unwillingness to accept Black people, enslaved or free, as human. In these essays, he emphasizes the role of African Americans as workers, soldiers, and explorers, situates them in the movement for women’s rights, and celebrates their contribution to the arts and culture of the nation. This edition of W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Gift of Black Folk is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.
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Circa l’autore
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was an African American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, and socialist. Born in Massachusetts, he was raised in Great Barrington, an integrated community. He studied at the University of Berlin and at Harvard, where he became the first African American scholar to earn a doctorate. He worked as a professor at Atlanta University, a historically Black institution, and was one of the leaders of the Niagara Movement, which advocated for equal rights and opposed Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta compromise. In 1909, he cofounded the NAACP and served for years as the editor of its official magazine The Crisis. In addition to his activism against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of discrimination and segregation, Du Bois authored such influential works as The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Black Reconstruction in America (1935). A lifelong opponent of racism and a committed pacifist, Du Bois advocated for socialism as a means of replacing racial capitalism in America and around the world. In the 1920s, he used his role at The Crisis to support the artists of the Harlem Renaissance and sought to emphasize the role of African Americans in shaping American society in his book The Gift of Black Folk (1924).
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