W.E.B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who lived from 1868 to 1963 and died in Ghana at age 95 after renouncing his American citizenship and becoming a citizen of a newly independent African country (talk about a mic drop). He outlived his enemies and kept fighting the whole damn time.
double consciousness. Du Bois said Black Americans live with a sense of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” You are American and you are Black. You belong and you do not. You see yourself as a person, but you also see how White America sees you, and those two visions never quite line up (putting it mildly).
The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is a collection of essays that basically invented African American studies. It contains the first systematic analysis of the psychological and social effects of racism. It also contains the line “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” which turned out to be so accurate it hurts (spoiler: the twenty-first century is not doing much better).
Du Bois also founded the NAACP, edited its magazine The Crisis for 25 years, organized Pan-African Congresses, wrote a definitive study of the Black Reconstruction era, and was prosecuted by the US government for being a foreign agent. He was acquitted (because the government had nothing, shocker).
Starter book: The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Read the chapter “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” It contains the double consciousness argument.
