Web dubois biography book
W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography 1868-1963
April 29, 2019
I had to keep a dictionary at my side while reading. I could have glanced over the use of, what for me were lots of arcane vocabulary, and still been fine, but reading is learning.
Lewis's writing does justice to a towering intellect of his time. This book was a condensed version of a two volume work. I will be eternally grateful to Lewis for the condensed version, for I would never have attempted two volumes. As it is, this one is 700 pages.
Du Bois was a part of what was called "the talented tenth". Those were the educated Blacks of their time. The ones who studied their way into the Black educated elite. And he was brilliant for sure.
As I read, I thought, at first, that he knew he was brilliant, and had a condescending attitude about him and was full of himself. And today, I might just think that. But in his time, I would give him the latitude to be just that. He had a mighty mind. He traveled the world in the highest of intellectual circles. His interactions with European, African, and world leaders and intellectuals was simply fascinating. The world showed him the respect he deserved, but not in America.
Sections on the Pan African movement were intriguing.
His mostly polite, but pointed, rivalry with Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute in determining how to move the Black movement forward was enlightening. Washington wanted more of an economic, by the bootstrap, tradesman way forward for Black progress. Du Bois approached it more from the education-by-university learning (a bit of a simplification of the dynamic, as I write this).
What to say of Du Bois's dalliances (and there were many) with the opposite sex? Lewis treats them in the most genteel manner. His facade of family harmony was paramount to his image, but he did not really live up to it. His wife deserved better.
This book gives a glimpse into the rarified air of educated black society when there wasn't much of it out there. But is also does not take its eye off the evolving civil rights movement. It seems so obvious to say, the civil rights movement was more than MLK and Thurgood Marshall, but reading this book opened the movement up to all the nuances and growing pains at the "big bang".
A prime mover of the civil rights movement. Fascinating to read its beginnings. His contributions were enormous.
Lewis's writing does justice to a towering intellect of his time. This book was a condensed version of a two volume work. I will be eternally grateful to Lewis for the condensed version, for I would never have attempted two volumes. As it is, this one is 700 pages.
Du Bois was a part of what was called "the talented tenth". Those were the educated Blacks of their time. The ones who studied their way into the Black educated elite. And he was brilliant for sure.
As I read, I thought, at first, that he knew he was brilliant, and had a condescending attitude about him and was full of himself. And today, I might just think that. But in his time, I would give him the latitude to be just that. He had a mighty mind. He traveled the world in the highest of intellectual circles. His interactions with European, African, and world leaders and intellectuals was simply fascinating. The world showed him the respect he deserved, but not in America.
Sections on the Pan African movement were intriguing.
His mostly polite, but pointed, rivalry with Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute in determining how to move the Black movement forward was enlightening. Washington wanted more of an economic, by the bootstrap, tradesman way forward for Black progress. Du Bois approached it more from the education-by-university learning (a bit of a simplification of the dynamic, as I write this).
What to say of Du Bois's dalliances (and there were many) with the opposite sex? Lewis treats them in the most genteel manner. His facade of family harmony was paramount to his image, but he did not really live up to it. His wife deserved better.
This book gives a glimpse into the rarified air of educated black society when there wasn't much of it out there. But is also does not take its eye off the evolving civil rights movement. It seems so obvious to say, the civil rights movement was more than MLK and Thurgood Marshall, but reading this book opened the movement up to all the nuances and growing pains at the "big bang".
A prime mover of the civil rights movement. Fascinating to read its beginnings. His contributions were enormous.
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