In the following essay, Cain discusses W. E. B. Du Bois's political ideology as revealed in his autobiography.

Cain is an educator. In the essay below, he focuses on Du Bois's decision to join the Communist Party and leave the United States for Ghana.

In the following essay, Elder discusses the themes of class, race, and morality in Du Bois's novel The Quest of the Silver Fleece.

In the essay below, Howe contends that Du Bois's commitment to Communism and Stalinism at the end of his life "was soiled both morally and intellectually."

In the essay below, Daniel remarks on Du Bois's first drama, The Star of Ethiopia.

Dr. Du Bois was more a history-maker than an historian. The two were intertwined, however; what interested Du Bois as a maker of History helped determine what he wrote, and what he wrote helped make history. (p. 249) As historian, dedicated to the most rigorous standards of integrity, he remained, nevertheless, agitator-prophet; present was another fundamental ingredient in the man, namely, the poet. (pp. 249-50)

[Both Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Waddell Chesnutt] have artistically uncovered to our gaze the inner life of the Negro, but Du Bois has done this and something more. He has not only graphically pictured the Negro as he is, but he has brooded and reflected upon and critically surveyed the peculiar environment of the Negro, and with his soul on fire with a righteous indignation, has written with the fervid eloquence of a Carlyle. If one desires to see how it feels to be a Negro and a man at the same tim...

Du Bois's early work struggles to fuse two complementary but substantially different mythological traditions. The first of these is "Ethiopianism," a literary-religious tradition common to English-speaking Africans, regardless of nationality. The other is the European tradition of interpretive mythology, transplanted to America by its European colonizers. (p. 411) Ethiopianism may be defined as the effort of the English-speaking Black or African person to view his past enslavement and p...