W.E.B. Dubois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919

Rating:
Summary: thoroughly researched, great subject, but dull reading
Review: I wanted to learn about W.E. B. Dubois and I did --the book is thoroughly researched --but at times there is too much detail; as an example, sometimes DuBois the man seemed hidden in digressions which covered his writings in what seemed to me excessive detail. I admired the work and analysis required to reach this level of specificity but regretted that there was relatively little about his day to day life and that there was not tighter editing and crisper prose.

Rating:
Summary: A Magisterial Study of the Struggles of a Man and His Race
Review: i was floored upon finishing this book.this Man was a pure GENIUS.his IDeas&Structures were Years ahead of the pack.his words were Forerunners for the same problems we face today that he faced back when he was Growing up.his Challenges&Debates were Legendairy.his vision of the world far exceeded any President then or now.his only SIn was his SKin.were if he were WHite he WOuld on a Dollar Bill.his Impact on the world will last till the end of time.

Rating:
Summary: A Magisterial Study of the Struggles of a Man and His Race
Review: Prior to reading volume one of David Lewis' "W.E.B. Du Bois:Biography of a Race" I was somewhat puzzled by the subtitle. But the significance of the subtitle becomes clear as one progresses through the book because Lewis does a wonderful job of tying Du Bois' life, thought, personality, and political activity to the evolving fortunes of African Americans as a people. Like all great biographies this one places Du Bois squarely in his social and historical environment. The result is that one gains deep insight into the plight of African America in the Age of Jim Crow as well as the various divisions within that community over strategies for dealing with the greater society.

This magisterial work is not a book for the casual reader who wants little more than a few facts about the life of W.E.B. Du Bois. It is a complex tapestry of a troubled man who saw himself as "the avatar of a race whose troubled fate he was predestined to interpret and direct." Lewis clearly wishes to show how Du Bois was "the incomparable mediator of the wounded souls of black people." This is a very rich and full biography. There are many asides and digressions as Lewis takes the reader into the troubled world of the educated African American at the end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. The conflicts and turmoil among Du Bois' "Talented Tenth" are vividly brought to the fore as the struggle between the Tuskegee Machine of Booker Washington and the more "radical" Du Bois faction takes center stage.

Du Bois' development and personal history are thoroughly covered as are all his important writings. He is shown to be a high-energy, brilliant man who was terribly frustrated and somewhat warped by the lack of intellectual and professional respect afforded him by the dominant white society. Du Bois is revealed to be a very human, if rather arrogant, and at times, hypocritical individual. He never outgrew, for instance, the racial stereotyping he learned at the German universities. Throughout his life he retained a deep ambivalence about Western civilization, almost a love-hate relationship that eventually fed his Afro-centrist delusions. Beneath it all one senses a degree of racial self-hatred at work. At times Du Bois waxes between practical political proposals for the United States and a quite utopian or mystical view of the possibilities of the colored people around the world. Along the way the reader is introduced to an amazing number of fascinating people involved in philanthropy and the early civil rights movement. John and Lugenia Hope, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, early founders of the N.A.A.C.P. like Oswald Villard, Joel Spingarn, and Mary Ovington, and the irrepressible William Monroe Trotter are just a few of the individuals who rightly have their lives celebrated in this eye-opening account.

Lewis is especially strong in depicting the limitations of the viewpoint and the activity of the white philanthropists and the developing conflicts between white organized labor and the poor black migrants moving to the northern cities during the "Great Migration." Throughout Lewis demonstrates total command of the material as well as a comprehension of philosophy, history, and the issues of the day. Overall, this is a marvelous look at the life of an important and complicated man as well as the evolving fortunes of the African American community. Lewis has given us a balanced and fair assessment of Du Bois the man and scholar. And, along the way, he provides a ringing indictment of much of American life in the one hundred years following the Civil War. This Pulitzer Prize winning work is a book for the patient and learned reader, but a book that returns great rewards. There are few, if any, books that so thoroughly document the struggle for civil rights in this country from the perspective of America's educated black community.

Rating:
Summary: Not a Gloss
Review: What most impressed me about this very detailed biography was the complete treatment that was given to Du Bois' Communist connections. With the end the the Cold War we have learned conclusively that the Communist Party USA was not the possibly misguided, but good-hearted progressive folks of conventional wisdom. Instead, the CPUSA was a conscious and dedicated tool of Soviet foreign policy.

No one can doubt that Du Bois was a brillant scholar and a careful researcher, at least in his early works. It was a tragedy that the unjust treatment of his race lead him to renounce America just as the Civil Rights movement was about to change it. Ironically, Du Bois exiled himself to newly-independent Ghana - - a country that became a one-party state, then a dictatorship (which Du Bois did not renounce) finally ended by a military coup.

For all Du Bois' claimed affiliation with the masses, reading this biography one cannot but get the feeling that what really bothered Du Bois was not the rejection of his people, but rather of himself.