The Souls of Black Folk

Harvard-educated sociologist, writer, and educator W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was an important figure in late post-Reconstruction America and the Harlem Renaissance. Having studied sociology at Harvard and the University of Berlin, Du Bois brought this training to bear on the issue of race by describing the culture, history, and identity of African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century.

Du Bois’s voice in The Souls of Black Folk ranges from that of an academic, marshalling detailed discussions of history, economics, and culture to explain why African Americans remain downtrodden two decades after emancipation, to a more personal, subjective voice that recounts the pain of his infant son’s death. Du Bois’s style reflects his immersion in the great works of Western literature, his familiarity with black folk culture, the influence of Victorian literature, and his deep engagement with the political discourse of the day.

Booker T. Washington is the author of Up from Slavery, the 1891 narrative of his birth as a slave and his achievements as an African-American leader.

Washington’s October 18, 1895, “Atlanta Compromise” speech argued that “[i]n all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” and that “[t]he wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing” (“Booker T.