W.E.B. du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk is probably one of the most influential and widely read texts of all African American letters and history. The original 1903 edition is reprinted with extensive annotations by two prominent du Bois scholars - an historian and a philosopher. Three additional essays by du Bois are included and many items of correspondence which contextualize how people read the text in his own time. There is a substantial introduction to du Bois' life and writings.
Author Biography
David W. Blight is associate professor of history and black studies at Amherst College. He is the author of Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1989) and essays on abolitionism, the Civil War, and American historical memory. He is the editor of the Bedford edition of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1993). Robert Gooding-Williams is George Lyman Crosby 1896 Professor of Philosophy and professor of black studies at Amherst College. He is the editor of Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising (1993) and the author of essays on Frederick Nietzxche, Du Bois, multiculturalism, and the representation of race in film.
