The Souls of Black Folk

The most important American book of its century, and one of the most beautiful. Du Bois named double consciousness, the experience of seeing yourself through the eyes of a society that despises you, and declared that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. Part sociology, part history, part music, it set the terms for everything that followed. To understand the century the country had, you read this first.

The first Black American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, a founder of the NAACP, and the author of the most important American book of its century. The Souls of Black Folk named double consciousness, the experience of seeing oneself through the eyes of a society that despises you, and declared that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. He was scholar, organizer, and prophet across a life that spanned from Reconstruction to the eve of the civil rights acts.