Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk: Thoughts on the Groundbreaking Classic Work of W.E.B. DuBois
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by Stanley Crouch and Playthell Benjamin

ISBN: 0762413492
Format: Hardcover, 160pp
Pub. Date: September 2002
Publisher: Running Press Book Publishers

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Syndicated columnist Stanley Crouch teams up with noted journalist Playthell Benjamin for this thought-provoking look back at The Souls of Black Folk, the epochal, prophetic work by the great African-American intellectual W.E.B. DuBois. In that classic book of essays, first published 100 years ago, DuBois took an autobiographical approach as he reflected on many facets of black life following the Emancipation Proclamation, and boldly challenged the opinions of his esteemed contemporary, Booker T. Washington. Presented in an attractive, streamlined paperback edition with a new introduction, Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk is a fitting tribute to a literary and sociological triumph on the 100th anniversary of its publication.

Author Biography: Stanley Crouch, an internationally recognized jazz critic and author, and Playthell Benjamin appraise the contributions of DuBois's work, noting its uncanny relevance to today's society and its profound impact on the field of African-American studies

A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress
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by David Levering Lewis & Deborah Willis

ISBN: 0060523425
Format: Hardcover, 208pp
Pub. Date: September 2003
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

As the world prepared to celebrate a century of progress at the 1900 International Exposition in Paris, W.E.B. Du Bois, then a sociology professor at Atlanta University, was approached by Thomas Calloway, an African American lawyer who called for black participation in the exposition, to illustrate progress made by black Americans since Emancipation. Du Bois, Calloway and Daniel A. P. Murray, a son of freed slaves and assistant Librarian of Congress, compiled books, manuscripts, artifacts and some 500 photographs of people, homes, churches, businesses and landscapes that defied stereotypes. “A Small Nation of People” brings together more than 150 of these photographs in a single volume for the first time.

Known as “The Exhibit of American Negroes,” the Paris display included a set of charts, maps and graphs prepared by Du Bois recording the growth of population, economic power and literacy among African Americans in Georgia. It also included photographs that exemplified dignity, accomplishment and progress such as images of African Americans attending universities and running businesses.

In the years following the exposition, Murray succeeded in acquiring the complete set of photographs for the Library’s Prints and Photographs collection. These images may be viewed on the Library’s Web site in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html) in the collection designated “African American Photographs Assembled for the 1900 Paris Exposition.” Prints of illustrations with reproduction numbers may be ordered from the Library’s Photo duplication Service.

Essays by Du Bois biographer David Levering Lewis and photo historian Deborah Willis provide the context for the choice of these photographs and their importance today.

David Levering Lewis, a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, is the author of several books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning volumes “W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century” and “W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race.” He is a professor of history at New York University.

Deborah Willis, also a MacArthur Fellow, writes frequently on African American themes as well as on the history of photography. Among her more recent publications is “Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840-Present.” She is a professor of photography and imaging at New York University.
—Library of Congress, press release "African American Life at Turn of 20th Century is Depicted in New Publication", October 16, 2003

W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919
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by David Levering Lewis

ISBN: 0805035680
Format: Paperback, 735pp
Pub. Date: September 1994
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois - the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America, a founder of the NAACP, - was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator. This monumental biography - eight years in the research and writing - treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves. Photo inserts.
 

W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963
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by David Levering Lewis

Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

ISBN: 0805025340
Format: Hardcover, 715pp
Pub. Date: September 2000
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated

In this final, magisterial volume, fifteen years in the research and writing, the Pulitzer Prize -- winning biographer David Levering Lewis stunningly re-creates the second half of W.E.B. Du Bois's charged and brilliant career. Beginning with the return of World War I African-American veterans to the riots and lynchings of the "Red Summer" of 1919 and ending with Du Bois' self-imposed exile and death in Ghana forty-four years later, Lewis charts the dramatic evolution of the premier architect of the Civil Rights movement from Talented Tenth elitist to internationalist and proponent of economic as well as racial democracy for all people of color. Based on original research on three continents, this richly detailed volume of history alters our understanding of the culture and politics of race in the twentieth century.