W. E. B. Du Bois Books

Howard Fast does an extraordinary job of using one former slave, Gideon Jackson, to illustrate the hopes, struggles and triumphs of African Americans after the Civil War. The concept of using a ficional novel to teach actual historical events should be done far more often. The reader is brought in to post war South Carolina to get a glimpse of life for both African Americans and pro and anti slavery whites. Fast is a very good writer and this book should, without doubt, be used in classrooms around the country. It offers a refreshing break from wordy textbooks and students appreciate that!

Even though this fictional book was assigned for a class in Civil War history, it turned out to be an enjoyable assignment. It is a very readable account of Reconstruction from 1865 to 1877. The book describes how well Reconstruction was working for recently emancipated slaves in South Carolina, and how bad it was going for the elite southern whites there. It does an amazing job of portraying the positive struggles of African Americans, and some working class whites, and how they were succeeding, until the final withdrawal of Union troops from the South.

This book is fun to read in the beginning, but the sad consequences of Reconstruction bring it to the inevitable conclusion. This does not detract from the book's accurate portrayal of what really caused Reconstruction to fail.

This is an excellent book that you will have no trouble reading in one sitting. If you read this book, you will understand what really happened during Reconstruction, and the real facts that they failed to tell most of us in high school. This book was published in 1944, long before most US historians recognized how southern historians had distorted the country's view of Reconstruction. Thanks to recent historians, we now have a much more accurate picture of this era.

I listened to this book on tape and it was moving and relevent to what is happening today in Iraq. A captive people were freed and fought for their freedom only to have the insurrectionists, the Klu Klux Klan in this book, return to power and harrass and oppress them. Black and white stood together opposing the KKK but are left unprotected as the US military pulled out of the south. One feels guiltly and angry for this action by our government.If one transfers those feeling to the plith of people in Iraq it leaves one calling for this history to not be repeated. Read this book and you will call for us to stay the course of freedom for all humanity.
A very moving story about a real historical event.

To not feel emotion while reading this book is impossible. The reader falls in love with the main character, Gideon Jackson. His enemies become the reader's enemies. His struggles break the reader's heart, because they've grown so close to Gideon. The reader becomes angry, sad, and just upset at how the people and the America that so many people fought for, can just turn its back on these poor black slaves. The hatred and the evilness portrayed by the Klu Klux Klan is unbearable and the reader realizes how unfortunate these times were for the black American. So if you want a very dramatic, but historically true novel this is the number ONE choice!

The Works of Howard Fast are incendiary,no doubt...Whether he rises into the sunlight of great literature, as does Steinbeck in works of a similar genre, or remains in the depths of vituperation, remains to be seen...The important thing to remember is, all of his characters and situations are strictly FICTIONAL and have nothing whatever to do with history, even those put forward as being historical! In "Spartacus", for example, his Spartacus is a man totally made up according to the Marxist scheme of things. With all the real sorrows to get excited about, why are we spending time on fictional ones? However, if you want the best of Fast, you need to read "The Hessian."

I just finished rereading DL Lewis's first DuBois biography, and am thinking about purchasing the second bio. I own a copy of the first, and did read the second bio as a library book. Reading the current reviewer comments for this book refreshed my memory somewhat about the second bio. I would agree with reader praise for the first bio; it is a splendid book, as good as historical biography can be. The second bio starts out well but ends up reading as having been rushed, which is probably what happened, Lewis rushing to meet a publishing deadline. We would all be well served if Mr. Lewis would consider reissuing the second bio when he has time to flesh it out.

I agree with Schmerguls, above, that David Levering Lewis' vol. II of DuBois has too many typographical errors; the endnotes are a nightmare; and that it needs a bibliography. But the book is more than a flawed book about a flawed man. It is readable, in general; Lewis could have skipped some of the big words in favor of words that ordinary readers could understand without a dictionary simultaneously open. Lewis uses colorful, precise verbs in many cases and succeeds in bringing characters to life in one word descriptions. He humanizes DuBois by discussing his friendships and by examples (through verbs and description ) of DuBois's autocratic manner. If this biography does not deserve a Pulitzer, I am curious what biography Schmerguls would consider worthy? The Oakland reviewer, above, is more on the mark in that this is a thoroughly researched and keenly insightful recounting of the life of a towering figure. I, too, sorely miss a bibliography. And the last quarter of the book is indeed full of typographical errors which a careful copy editor should have caught. One hopes that there will be a revision someday with all corrections made. Still, this is a wonderful history of the times and of an amazing (though "flawed," like the rest of us) figure in American history. DuBois certainly provoked solid thought at a time when mainstream America was unsure that Negroes could think. I have heard David Levering Lewis speak on C-Span. He writes better than he speaks because he says "Uh-uh" too much as he searches for those big words. But I'm so grateful that his work on DuBois came to fruition in my lifetime so that I could read it.

It seems odd that Lewis's biography of W. E. B. DuBois should be felt to be entitled to two Pulitzer prizes. The author disapproves at least on the surface of some of DuBois's more outrageous positions, but yet Lewis's biases show thru, and one gets the idea that in general if Lewis had not had the benefit of what has happened in regard to Communism in the past 15 years Lewis would be even more approving of DuBois's opinions than he now indicates. As others have mentioned, it is disconcerting to have a book from a major publisher have so many typographical errors. One would think they could have been easily avoided. And the endnotes are a nightmare. Instead of footnotes there are page notes in the back, with no discernible system: some indicate sources, but I found them very user-unfriendly. There is no bibliography as such, and overall I thought the book poorly edited. But the book tells a story of interest, especially during the period from 1945 to 1963.

With volume two Lewis completes his magisterial work chronicling the life and times of the controversial W. E. B. Du Bois, and this second volume is every bit as fascinating and scholarly as the first one which won the Pulitzer Prize. This volume follows Du Bois' descent from a founder and spokesman for the NAACP to his self-imposed exile in Ghana in 1963. Throughout the journey Lewis thoroughly develops the changing viewpoints Du Bois put forth as solutions to the problems of racial discrimination and the powerlessness of people of color in this country and around the world. From an integrationist (who at the same time criticized the assimilationist attitude of Frederick Douglas), Du Bois moved into the Pan-Africa movement (although he disliked and opposed Marcus Garvey and his movement), and eventually supported Black separatism before settling on socialism and Marxism in the later years of his life. His "petty bourgeois" ideas concerning Black economic separatism were, of course, vehemently criticized by his Marxist friends. Many believed "Du Bois was a romantic, a racialist, and an old man given to dreams of a 'shopkeepers paradise' as a solution to the depression."

Although Lewis soft-pedals Du Bois' deep character flaws which caused him to be constantly at odds with others who were "on his side" in the fight for racial equality, and permitted him to excuse the murder and outrages of Stalinism and the Japanese military aggression and ethnic cleansing in Asia, the author clearly reveals these facts of Du Bois' life. Lewis reveals how Du Bois' mind became so poisoned with a visceral hatred of White power, and its adjunct Western capitalism, that he eventually reached the point where he could look the other way or excuse the outrages committed by peoples or regimes opposed to Western interests (which he never seemed to quite grasp were really his own interests and those of the Negro in America). In the end Du Bois seemed opposed to almost any policy his country adopted and he supported any force in the world (be it Pan-Africanism, Bolshevism, Japanese militarism, or Chinese communism) that opposed the interests of the "White governments." Thus, did a brilliant social critic end up a confused mind destined to play the role of a pawn for regimes opposed to Western interests.

Lewis is very good at highlighting Du Bois' conflict with Marcus Garvey of whom he draws a great character sketch. He points out that Garvey's early followers were often poor, less educated, and often of West Indian origins, while the more "elitist" Du Bois circulated among, and pretended to speak for, the Talented Tenth of the African American people. Du Bois was an elitist and intellectual who could not stomach the irrational pronouncements of Marcus Garvey. Du Bois' viewpoint was that of the Black urban, educated, professional.

Lewis is also very strong with detail concerning Du Bois' widening differences with the NAACP leadership and the association's approach to fighting for equality. Du Bois was not a great fan of Walter White, Roy Wilkins, and Thurgood Marshall who, with their legalistic approach, stressed working within the "White system." As in volume one, Lewis does a good job of discussing Du Bois' many writings and shows how Du Bois himself (as witnessed by his "The Gift of Black Folks") never outgrew his own racial stereotyping. Lewis also soft-pedals Du Bois' many affairs with intellectual women, but he does document these relationships. He shows how Du Bois, a believer in the rights of women, virtually abandoned his wife Nina over a period of many years in almost every sense but financial (many of his friends and intellectual acquanitances never met his wife) and how he was less than a father to his unfortunate daughter Yolande (who was one of the great disappointments of his life.)

Lewis' book is possibly most fascinating when he deals with the Harlem Renaissance and the various figures with whom Du Bois was familiar. He details Du Bois' eventual alienation from the creative people of this era who depicted the seediness of Black urban life and culture. This too realistic depiction of Black life by the Renaissance literary figures embarrassed and angered Du Bois who wanted to believe that the "Negro race" was destined for a special place in history and, as a race, manifest certain elements of racial superiority. Du Bois criticized the Harlem Renaissance writers, poets, and artists for not sharing his belief that art and culture should serve racial politics. As Lewis shows, "Du Bois's own deep anti-modernist taboos surfaced" in his criticism of the Renaissance literati. Lewis also spends a good deal of time on the historiography of the Reconstruction Era to enable his reader to grasp the importance of Du Bois' writings on the subject and how they served as a necessary correction (despite Du Bois' own one-sidedness and exaggerated claims) to the more traditional school of historical writing on the Reconstruction Era. He also reveals the extent to which Du Bois would never give up the ridiculous notion that the freed slaves saved democracy in America. He desperatly needed to find a special role for the African American in the history of the the great country. Despite Du Bois' brilliant intellect, it was his tendency to see "White" hatred of the Negro as the central paradigm of all modern history, that prevented him from being widely accepted as a scholar. For him, all historical understanding began with this simple fact. Often his own worst enemy, Du Bois, Lewis tells us, "managed to give the impression that racial discrimination had been invented soley to make his life miserable."

In the end, Du Bois felt the American Negro had let him down and he lost his faith in the special role the Negro was to play in history. As he himself admitted, "I misinterpreted the age in which I lived." One has to think that this disillusionment played as much a role in his decision to leave the country as any other reason. All in all, Lewis' biography portrays Du Bois as not so much a heroic figure, as a tragic one; a brilliant mind warped by a troubled soul that was the reflection of much of the pain experienced by an educated African American in the first half of the twentieth century.

W.E.B. DuBois was born 2 years after slavery was abolished, and died two years before the wide ranging civil rights acts of 1965 were enacted. During this century, America was transformed from a largely rural nation whose economy depended on agricultural production (not the least of which was the cotton grown in the south by slaves) to an urban nation with the world's largest economy, built on industrial production. Throughout most of this transformation, DuBois was the loudest and clearest voice proclaiming the injustices suffered by the nation's Blacks.

DuBois voice took many forms. He was the nation's leading Black Sociologist, Political Scientist and Hstorian scholar for most of his life. He was among the giants, regardless of race, in each of these fields. This alone would have been remarkable, even had he not had to struggle against the burden of racism every step of the way. What makes DuBois' life truly amazing (an over used word, which is fully justified here) is that in addition to his academic leadership, DuBois was a newspaper columnist, speaker, and founded dozens of popular mass organizations (most famously, the NAACP). He was quite literally the mentor of virtually every leading Black scholar, lawyer, business man, politician, etc. that followed.

Surprisingly, given the transformation of the rest of society, DuBois retained his leadership role in the country as his many competitors and detractors faded--Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and Walter White, among others.

Lewis has produced a masterful biography of this complex, vastly under rated man. Lewis keeps his writing interesting, as he traces the twists and turns DuBois was forced to follow in his battle against racism. He began with a traditional middle class, elite (which DuBois dubbed "the talented tenth") analysis which urged the white power structure to recognize that elite blacks were as crucial to the nation's future as were the elite of the white population. He ended as a communist, victim of McCarthy, having given up all hope of democratic change, living in exile in Ghana, where he was finally accorded the unstinting respect he was denied during the first 90 years of his life in America.

Lewis gives DuBois final years short shrift. Lewis seems to agree with most of the contemporary civil rights leaders, who thought DuBois had simply lost his marbles in his dotage. Lewis therefore skims over the last two decades of DuBois life in a few all too brief pages.

I beg to differ. I believe that DuBois' thinking was an entirely accurate reflection of the frustrations he had encountered. As Lewis hints at, but fails to explore, DuBois tried every conceivable means of combating America's deep seated racism. He was rejected at every turn. Despite apparent victories, many would have said that the plight of Blacks at the end of DuBois' long life was not very much improved over their plight at the beginning of his life. The white controlled governments, universities, financial instutions, and political parties had not embraced the black elite, and the black masses had yet to see any benefit from the legal victories won by Thurgood Marshall and the Inc, Fund in the late 50's.

Lewis quotes DuBois aunt as chastizing DuBois for his attacks on Booker T. Washington as a quisling--DuBois may have grown up facing racism, but he did not have the whip marks of slavery on his back that Washington had suffered. Similarly, those who criticize DuBois for his emrace of communism had not suffered the frustrations of almost a century of struggle during which everything in America had changed--except its racism.

As DuBois lay dying, virtually his last words were to the President of Ghana, apologizing for not living long enough to "finish" his work.

I know of no one who was more reviled during his lifetime that better deserves the masterful biography Lewis has given us, and given to the ages.

Everyone should not only read Lewis, but should go back and re-read some of DuBois own works. DuBois could not be given a higher honor, and deserves no less.

It's time that Robinson's work receives the attention it deserves. No other book on African and African American thought that I know of shows such a keen ability, or even acknowledges the need for, a contextualization of black radicalism within the larger currents of world history. Unlike most intellectual histories which restrict themselves to national or racial boundaries, Robinson addresses the emergence of Marxism within western civilization, reaching back to the medieval and even classical periods, and shows how its thinkers were guided by ethnocentric and universalistic tendencies that caused them to miss the way that class solidarity has been thwarted by nationalism and ethnicity, and of how socialism as envisioned by European radicals has never been monolithic but has adapted itself to local and regional folkways. My only criticism of this work is that Franz Fanon is not included in the list of important black thinkers (Du Bois, James and Wright) to be discussed. Fanon's synthesis of nationalism, communism and existentialism as phenomena to be considered simulatenously for analyzing postcolonial movements seems to fit Robinson's discussion very well, so I'm surprised he receives such little attention. Otherwise, this is a wonderful and surprising study, which I highly recommend, and one that surpasses the unfortunate practice of so many books on African thought that refuse to recognize the dialectic between black and European intellectuals.

Upon completion of this treatise all readers should receive a Master's Degree in Black Studies. Robinson provides a detailed and complex study of Black Radicalism and Marxism's relation to it. This book works on a number of levels; Historical, Sociological and Philosophical. I think one of the book's strong points is that it broadens the reader's mind to other interpretations of Black Radicalism. His analysis of DuBois, and C.L.R. James' transformation is interesting along with his dissection of Marxian / Lenin dogma. Also, the way he traces the origins of racism in European culture to early Ethnic Group stratification in anitquity is insightful.

Obviously the first reviewer hasn't read the book. Robinson is arguing against a Marxist interpretation of the black radical struggle. He traces the history of European capitalism and the Marxist theoretical development that is based on this history in order to illustrate that Marxism is somewhat divorced from the history of Africa and African descendants. George Padmore was once an adamant Communist, but rejected the ideology due, in part, to the reasons that Robinson outlines.
The book is a bit inaccessible at times, but it's worth reading.

Interesting study of the construct of race and how little and how very much the definitions matter.

This is a really well-written book! The author does a nice job of balancing his interest in the lives of four specific people with the big picture. With a very big picture! I especially liked the equal attention paid to the stories of white America and black America, not to mention everything in between or outside of these. And the section on Jean Toomer is so very sad and very moving.

This is an exceptional addition to the body of work that explores the idea of race as a social and ideological construct in American history. In four tightly argued essays, Guterl deftly analyzes the contributions (and contradictions) of Madison Grant, W.E.B. Dubois, Jean Toomer, and Daniel Calahan as a viable window to the problems inherent in the color line. This work is a welcome (and highly sophisticated) addition to the field of whiteness studies (joining such works as Matthew Frye Jacobson's *Whiteness of a Different Color*, George Lipsitz's *Possessive Investment in Whiteness* and of course, David Roediger's *Wages of Whiteness*) as well as the growing body of work on scientific racism (one thinks of Lee Baker's work, *From Savage to Negro*) and race biography (following in the footsteps of his mentor David Levering Lewis). This book makes a number of promises and certailny delivers the goods. It is a wonderfully written book that weaves personal and historical information in a seamless study. I highly recommend it!!!!

This book took me on a deep journey. Granted it may take most more than giving it a once over, but if you spend the time and effort to really get to know the book, and research exactly what the author is saying it is well worth the time that you took to understand it. A great read, and will challenge even the most agile mind.

I am pleased that this book is available in a print that I can easily read.

I had to read this book for my African Diasopra class and I had to read most of the lines twice because I didn't understand it. I have read the whole thing at least once and still have little to say of the contents. The afterword, however, was most helpful. It must have some really powerful words in it, but the sentence structure threw me off too much to understand.

The Soul's of Black folk is an storied-tale of Negro's hardships, challenges and racial barriers during post-slavery. It highlights various stories of the Negro expeirence in an informative and pragmatic form. The Soul's of Black Folk is a good read; however, it does not provide a comphrensive state of the Negro expierence. It focuses on the deep South and the illiteracy and complaceny of black folk among other things, but it does not provide in-depth historical expeirenes of the Negro people. In sum, it does not provide an enriched history lessen of the Negro expeirence. Its a good book, but it should be read after other books that can provide a complete picture of the Negro expeirence.

Complete and unabridged, W.E.B. DuBois seminal 1903 publication, The Souls Of Black Folk is now available in an audiobook format (6 cassettes, 9 hours). This little book did more to shape the consciousness of African--Americans than any other and after a century, continues to hold the status of being a major work of both American literature. Superbly narrated by Warren Hazlittl and enhanced with a piano accompaniment by Jim Popoulous, The Souls Of Black Folk remains a seminal work and a recognized milestone with respect to the long and continuing struggle for racial equality and African-American dignity.

These essays, actually sketches and ruminations of DuBois', remain an enduring backdrop for the picture in which race in America is framed. At the end of each decade, they seem to continue emitting new pregnant meanings:

During the decade of the 60s, when I first read the book, it seemed to be an open message to white America about the Negro: an appeal, as it were, that "the Negro was on the march," and that his main instrument of entering the American mainstream (his only secure dream) was his spiritual cadence and his deep and abiding faith in religion, and equally deep faith in the meaning of the American revolution, and in the American dream and its misapplied ideals. A warning was issued in the "parable of the Coming of John": a reckoning of this fractured meaning and it's implied promises inevitably had to occur.

When I read it during the 70s, it seemed more like an interior dialogue between "Blacks," about "being constantly on the struggle against racism." It was especially a dialogue between the "uneducated and unsophisticated" on the one hand, and "the educated and sophisticated" (the "so-called "talented tenth"), on the other. But also it was a dialogue between the conservative forces of "compromise" that wanted to win by "turning the other cheek," and the more progressive and revolutionary forces who wanted to do so "by any means necessary." Yes, Martin and Malcolm were summoned up through DuBois' words in the same debate that had occurred two generations before between DuBois and Booker T. Washington. The words, but not the structure of the arguments, had changed. They were issued with the same degree of passion, and with the same unfortunate results: more promises, but powerful little "real progress," and then the murders of both Martin and Malcolm.

Then when I read it in the 80s the meaning took on an entirely different character for me. I had watched DuBois' struggle at close range, as I had that of other black intellectuals and heroes, like Paul Roberson, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, etc. They all followed a pattern: the black heroes were either forced out of the country, or left voluntarily as DuBois, Cleaver and Stokely eventually did, or were jailed, deemed to be social outcasts, or killed. Those remaining were co-opted and otherwise neutered: It became clearer and clearer that the "Souls of Black Folk" were not about black people after all, but, in relief, was just a mirror of the "dark troubled souls of white people."

DuBois' little book now began to make sense: His references to Freud, to Marx, his most famous line "the problem of the color line," and of course his parable: "The Coming of John" all seemed to snap into perfect alignment: The Souls of Black Folks was no longer about blacks, but in relief, in its subtext, was about the tenacity and persistence of "white hatred, white fear, and white resistance", about the fear in the white heart: The problem of race, the problem of the color line was not about blacks at all, but was about white fear and resistance to the very thing they claim to cherish most: "freedom and equality."

In the 90s this frightening new meaning of the "Souls of Black Folk" as a metaphor for white fear and resistance was being "filled-in" and confirmed: For instance, even though the language of race and racism had begun to change, (it now had a positive patina grafted on to it) but as was the case eight decades before, little else had changed. The resisters had circled their psychological wagons. Morally they had been forced into a defensive crouch if not back into the closet altogether, but they were far from going away: Through a new vocabulary of coded language, and the false civility of "political correctness," and "tokenism," a misappropriation of Dr. King's life and death, a feint back to rightwing religious ideology, by exaggerating non-existent racial progress, and through a whole repertoire of other reactionary stratagems, they were scrambling to make a determined comeback, a final desperate attempt to retain the old meanings.

Now at the turn of the new millennium, even as it appears that our first Black (half white) President" might replace our most incompetent (all white) president, "The Souls of Black People," are again just a reflection of what is hidden in the white heart. Now it is hidden under the elusive and empty notion of "multiculturalism." In today's racial narrative, DuBois' black souls are: the "troubled inner city," with its statistics of horror, with its "at risk low-achieving children," its "high crime rates," "the troubled public schools," the "welfare mothers," and the "social meltdown" more generally.

The souls of Black Folk have been fragments and shredded down to nothing. In the mean while, its reflection, its doppelganger: the America's reactionary white forces, with their hatred and fear normalized in plain sight, are again on the march, winning as usual by fiat: They have succeeded in changing the scenery on "front street" so that there, America looks very much like racial progress would look if America ever decided to have any, but everything else in the background, on the back streets -- the context, the pretext, and the subtext of American racism -- remains exactly the same as it did in 1903.

Five Stars

This a biography of one of the original founder of the Civil Rights movement. W.E.B. Du Bois(William Edward Burghardt). He was born in Massachusetts in 1868. He grew up with his mother and brother. His father had left when he was quite young. It was soon found out how smart and intelligent he was that he eventually skipped a grade. He did not see the extreme prejudice of being black till he enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He eventually became professor, writer, speaker and social activist. He is the author of the well known book "the souls of black folk" which is still very valid today. He was one of the first African American involved with the founding of the NAACP(national association advancement of colored people). This book goes into detailed of his upbringing, his college years and his fight for equality of his fellow black americans and black everywhere. this books shows many pictures of the various era that the book covers

A Stranger In My Own House: The Story Of W.E.B. Di Bpod by Bonnie Hinman joins other biographies for this age group with a difference: it focuses on his basic convictions that political and economic equality equaled a voluntary segregation as a means to achieving these goals. Chapters follow his press for the liberation of blacks around the world, and reveal the foundations for many of his controversial beliefs. Also an important guide.

W.E.B. DuBois - pioneering sociologist, historian, professor, writer, editor, speaker, social activist, founding member of the NAACP and world traveler - has become an icon, and as such, rather unapproachable. Bonnie Hinman brings his work, passions and even his doubts to life, making him real.

She also navigates deftly through the complex social history of the era, which during DuBois lifetime ranged from Reconstruction to the early 1960's. This is particularly commendable, as too often the Civil Rights Movement is simplistically portrayed as all black people joining hands and marching forth as one unified voice. Without wandering off into confusing tangents, the book manages to capture the fact that "what was becoming the civil rights movement was born in fits and starts and changed along the way."

Well illustrated with period paintings, photos and documents, the book includes a time line, source notes, bibliography, and selected web resources. Highly recommended for young adults and actually, even for adults who would like to get to know this great and complex man.

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures) This is a well written book looking at the aspects that influenced Lincoln in his life and how they affected his stand on slavery and race. You get a look at not only how he felt personally but also how his love of the U.S. Constitution led to how he made many of his decisions regarding slavery.

Of the writing of books on Lincoln, there is, apparently, no end. Americans' fascination for the man seems to increase rather than diminish. But this fascination is rarely uninterested. Authors (and readers) on Lincoln tend to be hagiographers or debunkers, intent either on canonizing or damning him. As a consequence, it's frequently difficult to discover the real man underneath the legend.

In his Big Enough to Be Inconsistent, veteran Civil War scholar George Frederickson defends an interpretation of Lincoln's views on slavery and race that seeks a "middle ground" between the hagiographers who see the president as a proto-civil liberties advocate and the debunkers who see him as a hypocritical racist. Frederickson argues that Lincoln's views on both the institution of slavery and racial inequality changed over time, and that their fluidity suggests a position that's much more complex and ambiguous than hagiographers and debunkers allow. Like most of us, Lincoln's position on race wasn't entirely consistent. Moreover, Lincoln's ambivalence is complicated by the fact that he was a politician, and sometimes said things for public consumption that were more expedient than genuinely believed.

One thing is certain. Lincoln was never ambivalent in his moral opposition to slavery. But the racist assumptions he absorbed from his virulently Negrophobic home state of Illinois clustered to form views in the pre-war Lincoln that Frederickson doesn't hesitate to characterize as white supremicist, albeit a "relatively passive or reactive" sort (p. 84). Lincoln advocated a minimalist bestowal of free trade rights on blacks, but balked at defending full civil and moral equality. Moreover, his deep-seated Constitutional conservatism and his near-religious veneration of the Union made him a staunch advocate of gradual emancipation (a model defended by Henry Clay, one of Lincoln's heroes) and an equally staunch critic of abolitionists. Again like Clay, Lincoln was also a firm supporter of expatriation and colonization of freed blacks.

But the war experience began to change Lincoln's views. Gradually recognizing the value of using enslaved blacks against the Confederacy, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation primarily as a war effort. This reversed his position at war's beginning that "the Negro" shouldn't be "dragged" into the conflict (p. 90). Even after the Emancipation, Lincoln was reluctant to use blacks as soldiers, believing that they were fit only as laborers. But by August 1863, after witnessing the bravery and skill of "colored troops," Lincoln had changed his mind. This reversal also seems to have reconciled Lincoln to the possibility that free blacks had a legitimate place in American society, because he also dropped his insistence on colonization (much to the relief of his secretary John Hay, who always considered the strategy "a hideous and barbarous humbug" - p. 113). But Lincoln didn't reverse the conviction, born of his Constitutional conservatism, that civil liberties for blacks had to be determined by the states, not the federal government. Right up to the end of his life, then, the tension between his moral convictions and his political principles endured.

As Frederickson himself concedes, "none of this should be surprising to good historians" (p. xi). But the skill with which Frederickson makes his case for a "middle ground" between Lincoln-veneration and Lincoln-hatred, as well as the compact elegance of this little book, make it well worth reading. It would've been good had Frederickson reflected more on the curious tension between Lincoln's fidelity to the Constitution and his moral aversion to slavery. Is it appropriate, for example, that constitutionalism trumps immediate response to glaring moral wrongs? But Frederickson's reminder that inconsistency and ambiguity are almost always embedded in our ethical positions is a refreshing response to true believers of any stripe who insist that anything less than lockstep consistency is morally condemnable.

This book addresses global issues, immigration policy, womens rights, civil rights, and the nature of European colonizaton of Africa. Du Bois connects the dots that tie the East St. Louis riots, the brutal treatment of african labor by european colonists, the low wages of domestic african american workers and women in america, and the shortage of european migration/workers because of the "great war". This is a first hand account of history by an African American that differs from past accounts of the above mentioned events in history texts, the movies, and the majority press.
Darkwater is an easy read that educates. This is history not written as history by the author but as a comment on the events of his time that have significance to what is occuring in the world today.
I found the book very enjoyable and enlightening. I witheld one star from the rating because the poetry, although good, seemed be tossed in as a filler.

Fondly called W.E.B., Dr William Edward Burghardt DuBois was a conscientious voice, whose mouthpiece was just a pen. Each of his writings buttressed this point.
A bundle of intellect, all his works have remained potent till this day. Having enumerated the problems and experiences of emancipated slaves in "The Souls of Black Folk", Dr DuBois used this book, "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil", to highlight the intricacies of the then White-Black relationships. This book has a socio-economic focus, and dealt with such associational issues like exploitative labour, voting rights, women's rights, and family values. It suggested guidance and remedies wherever necessary. The ideas and insights of Dr DuBois were general in perspective: both Whites and Blacks were thought of.
This book is more than eighty years old; however, anybody who reads it, needs only to turn a few pages before discovering that we are still grappling with most of its lamentations.
Finally, I must say that I cherished reading this book. "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil" is a compelling piece; especially for anyone who is familiar with either "The Souls of Black Folk" or "Dusk of Dawn".

The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures) I purchased this book from Usabookexchange and as advertised was in excellent condition. The shipping was fast as promised. Upon checking the site found it to represent a company that I will purchase books from again.

I had the chance to take a class called the "Economics and Politics of Race and Inequality" with Professor Loury at Boston University. He had recently released this book, and of course, it was required reading. Loury presents many interesting ideas in this book, including the difference between racial discrimination (treating people differently because of their race) and racial stigma (the image that a person gives off because of their race). Loury argues that racial discrimination, which today is mostly 'discrimination in contact' (between two private people) and not 'discrimination in contract' (in a legal matter), is not what should be viewed as the end game. Of course, he thinks that ending racial discrimination would be great, but the more important thing to do, he says, is to work to end the stigma that black Americans have.

Loury, when he used to be a conservative, was considered as a "conservative intellectual", a term that many would find contradictory. Even though his politics may have changed (he now considers himself more liberal, even supporting the 20 point plan in the recent Univ. of Michigan affirmative action case), his status as an intellectual hasn't changed. I had difficulty understanding this book and I had him there to explain it to me! Of course, I got it after a while, but Loury often talks on a level much higher than those not entrenched with the subject will understand. This book, which is a recap of a series of lectures and speeches he gave, is for an intellectual by an intellectual. It's not a casual read on a summer afternoon. But if you're really interested in race relations and racial equality, pick it up. He lays out his arguments well, and even though I don't agree with him on most of his ideas, he's a fascinating guy.

Glen is an accomplished economist, and you can tell in the style of his writing: He is organized and sets up axioms and bullet points to clarify his arguments. I had the opportunity to hear him speak in 2002, and he is quite persuasive. In this book, Loury makes a case against liberal individualism, the popular assumption that liberalized, free market, "race-blind" policies will naturally dissolve unjust inequalities over time. In this discussion, Loury avoids the topic of overt "racial discrimination", which is easier to spot and has more obvious effects, and focuses instead on the strong, persistent, and self-replicating patterns caused by more subtle forces, which he terms "racial stigma". Stigma refers to bodily markings that are automatically cognitively perceived in all social interaction and which have strong social associations that affect perception and behavior of observers. This stigma, and the associations and stereotypes that are cognitively linked with it, acts to rationalize and sustain systematic racial inequality, perpetuating factors that drive formation of stigma. I believe that these arguments appear more compelling if the reader has previous knowledge of theories in cognitive psychology suggesting that mental associational categorization based on observed statistical tendencies applied to readily observable stimuli may form the basis of all thought and learning Glen's arguments are not airtight, and he relies primarily on philosophical thought experiments for illustration; however, his explorations are useful, and a perspective of racial inequality that did not consider and respond to these perspectives would be naive and incomplete.

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The classic collision of teleological (emphasizing the result) and deontological (empahsizing the procedure) philosophy applied to race relations in the United States. More than mere economic consquentialism, or sociological stucturalism, Loury rails against racial stigmatism, and posits powerfully in favor of "racial egalitarianism," by use of moral suasion. Any right thinking, moral minded human being will be disturbed by his polemics, and cannot help but be swayed by his appeal. I will, however, leave it to you, the reader, to discover for yourself which side of the philosophical divide, mentioned above, Loury favors. Very highly recommended.

The current issue of the Journal of Economic Literature (December 2002) has a review of Loury's book by Steven Raphael (Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California at Berkely) on pages 1202 - 1214. The JEL is a peer reviewed journal; the article is very thoughtful and well written. Raphael's article ends with the following sentences:

"While many may take issue with Loury's analysis of racial inequality in the United States, a careful study of this book is sure to challenge one's assumptions and to force the reader to think more deeply about the stubbornly and profoundly persistent and profound social disadvantage of African-American. On this basis alone, the book is a must-read." (page 1213)

The JEL arrived this morning and I ordered a copy today.